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Pakistan

By:

Rizwan Hussain

Source:

The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World Provides comprehensive scholarly coverage of the full geographical and historical extent of Islam

View Archived Article Click link to access earlier form of this article as published in the Oxford Enyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World

Pakistan

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Islami Jumhurriya‐i‐Pakistan), with a population of 164 million ( 2006 estimate), is the second largest Muslim state in the world, after Indonesia. Although they belong to five distinct ethnic groups—Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun (Pathan), Baluchi, and Muhajir (Urdu‐speaking immigrants from prepartition India)—97 percent of Pakistanis are Muslims. Non‐Muslim minorities include Christians, Hindus, and Parsis. Of the Muslims, between 15 and 20 percent are Shiite, the majority belonging to the Ithnā Asharī (Twelver) school of Shiism. Minority Shiite sects include Ismailis, mostly in Karachi and the northwestern region of Gilgit, and Bohras, whose spiritual headquarters is in Mumbai (Bombay), India. The overwhelming majority of Pakistan's Sunni Muslims subscribe to the Hanafi school of law, although a small minority follow the Hanbali school.

Origins.

Pakistan came into being as a result of the partition of British India on August 14, 1947 . The partition and independence of India and Pakistan were accompanied by widespread communal violence between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. As many as a million people are believed to have died, and 15–20 million became refugees.

Pakistan comprised the Muslim‐majority areas of the Indian Subcontinent. East Pakistan—separated from West Pakistan by approximately 1,000 miles of Indian territory—seceded in 1971 to form the state of Bangladesh. The name “Pakistan,” coined in 1933 , means “land of the pure” in Urdu and is also an acronym formed from the names of the northwestern provinces of India: P for Punjab; a for Afghan (the North‐West Frontier Province, NWFP); k for Kashmir; i for euphony; s for Sind; and tan for Baluchistan. Contemporary Pakistan is a federation comprising four provinces: Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, and the NWFP, as well as the semiautonomous Northern Areas and Azad (free) Kashmir whose possession is in dispute with India.

Pakistan is unique among Muslim countries in its relationship with Islam: it is the only country to have been established in the name of Islam. Hence, Pakistan's political experience is integrally related to the struggle of Indian Muslims to find an autonomous political center after their loss of power to the British in the early nineteenth century. Muslims, who had ruled large parts of India for several centuries before the consolidation of British power in the early 1800s, perceived a challenge to their civilization in a political space increasingly dominated by European and Hindu ideas and values. Beginning with Sayyid Ahmad Khān's ( 1817 – 1898 ) modernist Aligarh movement of educational and religio‐intellectual reforms that laid the foundation for a separate Muslim political identity and encouraged the Muslims to struggle for their rights, the concept of a sovereign Muslim political domain was kept alive by prominent Muslim political leaders of India such as Mawlana Muhammad Ali Jauhar ( 1878 – 1931 ) and Bahadur Yar Jung ( 1905 – 1944 ).

The struggle for protecting Muslim “rights” took a political form in 1906 when the Western‐educated Indian Muslim elite established a political organization, the All‐India Muslim League, in Dhaka. The League, although professing loyalty to British rule, championed the religious, cultural, political, and economic interests of Indian Muslims and sought to thwart perceived attempts by the growing Hindu nationalist and revivalist organizations to deprive Muslims of their rightful place in the India of the future. This drew support for the Muslim League and its platform for a separate system of Muslim representation in all Indian political institutions. Nevertheless, the era between the two World Wars saw periods of collaboration between Hindus and Muslims, especially in 1919 – 22 when Muslims joined the Indian National Congress—the leading Indian nationalist party—in the Khilāfat movement to agitate against British rule. The Khilafat movement had emerged from the Indian Muslim opposition to the British role in the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The movement's anti‐British agitation coincided with the Congress's attempts to launch the first campaign of non‐cooperation with the British in 1919 . Consequently, the Khilafat movement allied with the Indian National Congress to further their joint interest challenging British rule in India. However, the Muslim League's participation in this short‐lived display of Hindu‐Muslim cooperation was relatively insignificant.

The imposition by the British in the 1920s and 1930s of a system of separate electorates for Muslims and Hindus further increased Muslim exclusivity and at the same time apprehensions about Hindu dominance. In this period, a leading segment of the Muslim political elite of India believed that the religious, cultural, and political interests of the Indian Muslim community could not be safeguarded in a post‐independence united India dominated by a Hindu majority. This elite included the Muslim poet‐philosopher Muhammad Iqbal ( 1877 – 1938 ) who argued for centralizing “the life of Islam as a cultural force” in a specified territory through the creation of a “consolidated Muslim State” in northwestern India. Muhammad Ali Jinnah ( 1876 – 1948 ), as the spokesman for the group advocating the partition of the Indian Subcontinent, based his plan on a rather nebulous “two‐nations theory” which emphasized that Muslims and Hindus represented two separate and distinct nations in India based on religion (Islam and Hinduism) and different historical backgrounds, social customs, and culture. The Muslim League therefore adopted the “two‐nations” theory as its political platform in its program for creating a separate state in the Muslim‐majority areas of northwestern and northeastern India, to be known as Pakistan. However, Hindu and even some leading Indian Muslim nationalists opposed the League's emphasis on Muslim separatism, alleging that the British were encouraging the Hindu‐Muslim divide in order to maintain their imperial hold over India.

After the failure of repeated attempts in the mid‐1940s by the Muslim League to reach an acceptable settlement with the Hindu‐dominated Indian National Congress that could retain India's unity, the British in 1946 accepted the League's insistence on a communal partitioning of India.

The popular acceptance of the idea of Pakistan was made possible only by the Muslim League's success in politicizing the religious sentiments of Indian Muslims and in claiming that the struggle for Pakistan was the struggle for the preservation and glory of Islam. Some proponents of the Pakistan movement even claimed that it was a continuation of the earlier Islamic revivalist movements in India of Shāh Walī Allāh al‐Dihlawi (d. 1762 ) and Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (d. 1831 ). This revivalist impulse was also intertwined with the late‐nineteenth‐ and early‐twentieth‐century Muslim modernist‐nationalist tradition of Sayyid Ahmad Khān, Syed Ameer Ali , and Muhammad Iqbal , and such diverse religious revivalist movements as the Tablīghī Jamāat of Mawlānā Muhammad Ilyās, the reformist Sufi movement of Mawlānā Ashraf Alī Thānvī, the Jamāat‐i Islāmī of Mawlānā Abū al‐Alā Mawdūdī, the Khilāfat movement of Maulānā Muhammad Alī Jauhar, and the Khāksar movement of Allāmah Ināyatullāh al‐Mashriqī.

The Pakistan movement represented the interests of India's Muslim elite comprising aristocratic landlords, professional middle classes, and intelligentsia who were generally loyal to the British Raj, but the movement's core support lay in the Muslim minority areas such as the United Provinces, the Central Provinces, and the Bombay Presidency. The Muslim minority of these regions feared their possible marginalization in a future united India ruled by a Hindu majority. The Muslim‐majority regions of India that were to form Pakistan were less concerned about the consequences of a Hindu‐dominated central government after the end of India's colonial status. Moreover, the Pakistan movement comprised Indian Muslims belonging to diverse ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian groups. For political reasons the modernist Muslim leadership used religious sentiments to rouse and unite India's largely illiterate Muslim population to achieve its goal of separate nationhood.

Both Jinnah, who was given the title Quaid‐i Azam (Great Leader) after the creation of Pakistan, and the poet‐philosopher Muhammad Iqbal perceived Islam not in terms of the details of Shariah (Islamic law), but in three broad and interrelated levels:

(1) Islam as a faith, a religious and moral system whose cardinal beliefs mark its adherents as Muslims; (2) Islam as a culture, a way of life that would integrate Muslims into a nation‐state; and (3) Islam as a political ideological system whose set of values could socialize Muslims into a viable, separate political community

. This conception contrasted with that of many religious scholars, especially those of the Deoband school in the United Provinces who envisioned an Islamic state where Islamic law would be strictly implemented. Most Deobandi scholars rejected the demand for Pakistan and condemned the Muslim League leaders, especially Jinnah, for their ignorance of the fundamentals of Islam. They were members of the Jamiyat‐i‐Ulama‐i‐Hind (Society of Muslim Clergy of India) who, under Mawlānā Husain Ahmad Madanī , opposed the creation of Pakistan and allied itself with the All‐India National Congress.

Despite the opposition of the religious scholars, large segments of the Indian Muslim community saw Pakistan as an Islamic state that would reflect the religious and social values of early Islam and its ideals of justice, equality, and brotherhood.

Nature of Islamic Politics in Pakistan.

Pakistan's “Islamic identity” has consistently generated tension within the political system as the country's secularly‐oriented ruling elite has confronted intermittent demands from the ulema (religious scholars) and Islamist groups for the imposition of the Shariah. At the sociocultural level, Islam remains an important factor in the life of most Pakistanis, but Pakistan does not present a monolithic structure of Islamic beliefs, practices, and interpretation. There is considerable variation in the ways people articulate, interpret, and practice their faith and work out its implications in their individual and collective lives. The political and religio‐intellectual situation of Islam in Pakistan can be discussed with reference to at least four categories, orthodox/traditional, Sufi, reformist/liberal, and revivalist/fundamentalist Islam, apart from minority groups such as Shiites, Ismailis, and Ahmadis.

Orthodox Islam is represented by the Sunni ulema who are regarded as guardians of the Sunnah (normative practices) of Prophet Muhammad. Included in this category are three important schools: the orthodox Deobandi school, the Sufi‐oriented Barelwi school, and the very conservative Wahhabi school of Ahl‐i Hadīth and its offshoots.

Although the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are Sunni, substantial differences exist within this group with respect to the interpretation of Islam. The Sunni Deobandi school differs from the Barelwis on various theological issues. The Deobandi school, with its scriptualist interpretation of Islam differs from the Barelwi school that promotes a more moderate form of Sunnism, emphasizing aspects of Sufism and spirituality that traditionally characterized Indo‐Pakistani Islamic culture.

Intense rivalry has existed between the Deobandi‐oriented Jamiyat‐i‐Ulama‐i‐Islam (JUI, the Society of the Religious Scholars of Islam) and the Barelwi‐oriented Jamīyatul Ulamā'‐i Pakistān (JUP, Society of Pakistani Religious Scholars). The JUI was formed by pro‐Pakistan ulema who had earlier differed with staunchly anticolonial Jamiyat‐i‐Ulama‐i‐Hind's support for a united India. The conservative ulema of JUI insist on strict adherence to the Shariah as interpreted by the founders of the four schools of Sunni Islamic law, while the JUP's religious ideology is more populist, reflecting a Sufi orientation that includes, among other things rejected by conservatives, the veneration of saints.

The third group, Jamīyat Ulamā‐i Ahl‐i Hadīth (Society of the Religious Scholars of the People of the Hadīth), preaches uncompromising monotheism, rejects all notions of intercession by spiritual mentors, and condemns visitation of Sufi shrines. Among the nonpolitical Islamic groups, the best known is the Tablīghī Jamāat, a grassroots movement of lay Muslims and some ulema that strives for the moral and spiritual renewal of individual believers.

Sufi Islam in Pakistan is represented at two levels. The first is the populist Sufism of the rural masses, associated with unorthodox religious rituals and practices, belief in the intercessory powers of saints, pilgrimage to veneration at their shrines, and a binding spiritual relationship between the shaykh or pir (master) and murīd (disciple). Many Muslims in rural areas of Pakistan, where orthodox Islam has yet to penetrate effectively, identify themselves with some pir, living or dead, and seek his intercession for the solution of their worldly problems and for salvation in the hereafter. There is widespread belief in the powers of both the saints and pirs, and legends about their miracles (karāmah) abound. Many pirs and sajjādah nishīns (hereditary custodians of shrines) are either themselves landlords or are associated with the traditional landowning interests. Although most of the major shrines were taken over by the government in 1959 and 1961 as a part of President Ayub Khan's modernization program, the actual management of these shrines, the organization of their religious activities, and the dispensation of spiritual favors continue under the guidance of the original sajjādah nishīns. Many of these pir families use their spiritual influence to gain election to the national and provincial legislatures.

The other strain is that of scholastic or intellectual Sufism, a recent phenomenon based in urban areas and becoming increasingly popular in educated circles. Influenced by the writings of the medieval theologian al‐Ghazālī (d. 1111 ), the Sufi reformer Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī (d. 1624 ), and Shāh Walī Allāh (d. 1762 ), and by the spiritual experiences of the masters of the Suhrawardī and Naqshbandī orders, these modern Sufis are rearticulating Islamic metaphysics as an answer to Western materialism. For them, Sufism is the heart of Islam, and Islamic revival begins with the spiritual reawakening of individual Muslims.

Reformist or liberal Islam in Pakistan owes its origin to the writings of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khān (d. 1898 ) and to his educational reform efforts, represented by the Aligarh movement. Sir Sayyid emphasized the role of rational thinking in understanding the purposes of Shariah and maintained that ijtihād (independent reasoning) was permissible not only in matters of law but also in matters of doctrine. His main contribution, however, was in his efforts to persuade Indian Muslims to learn the modern scientific method, acquire new technological skills and ideas, and embody the spirit of liberalism and progress that he believed was essentially Islamic. Islamic modernism also found expression in the works of the poet‐philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, one of the preeminent thinkers of twentieth‐century Islam, whose role in the creation of Pakistan was noted above. His vigorous pleas to reactivate the “principle of movement” in Islam—ijtihād—to reinterpret the foundational legal principles of Islam in the light of modern conditions and ideas, and to work toward the reconstruction of Islamic religious thought have been a driving force for Islamic modernism in South Asia.

The Jamāat‐i Islāmī (Islamic Party, JI) founded by Sayyid Abu al‐Ala Mawdudi (d. 1979 ) in 1941 represents revivalist/fundamentalist Islam in today's Pakistan. However, over the past two decades, JI and other traditionalist parties such as the JUI and even the JUP have cooperated politically, and it has thus become increasingly difficult to differentiate between the revivalist and traditionalist streams. The Jamaat has been active in Pakistan's politics and has played a decisive role in shaping Islamic intellectual and political discourse in Pakistan. Its support base is lower‐middle‐class Muslims from both the traditional petit bourgeoisie and the more modern economic sectors of Pakistani society.

The JI seeks Islamic revival through the establishment of an Islamic state with the Qur'ān and Sunnah as its constitution and the Shariah, traditionally interpreted, as its law. It regards Islam as a comprehensive way of life that provides guidance in all human activities. It has focused on capturing political power in order to implement the socioeconomic ideals of Islam. In the course of its intense ideological and political battles against secular liberalism, Communism, and Islamic modernism, the JI has emerged as the most articulate voice of Islamic conservatism in socioreligious matters in contemporary Pakistan. Although its political influence and ideological impact on Pakistan's educational and cultural institutions has been considerable, the JI has consistently fared poorly in national elections. It remains the most organized and disciplined Islamist party in Pakistan that has had any success in penetrating the armed forces and the bureaucracy. It has been closely associated with support for Islamic resistance movements in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Bosnia, as well as with other Muslim causes such as Palestine and Iraq (since 2003 ). These developments have strengthened its links with Islamic movements in other Muslim countries including Shiite Iran.

In addition to the various schools of thought within Sunni Islam, there are many Ithna Ashari (Twelver) Shiite Muslims in Pakistan. Shiites in Pakistan have generally supported secular regimes, for fear of the Sunni ulema who, over the past two decades, have shown increasingly anti‐Shiite views. Shiites have played a prominent role in Pakistan's politics in the past: the country's first Governor‐General Muhammad Ali Jinnah ( 1947 – 1948 ) and two presidents, Iskander Mirza ( 1956 – 1958 ) and Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan ( 1969 – 1971 ), were Shiities. The Islamic revolution in neighboring Iran in 1979 raised significant interest among Pakistan's Shiite minority by strengthening their religious consciousness and reawakening sectarian identities by making them aware of their distinct doctrinal position. The Pakistani Shiites reorganized their originally nonpolitical movement into a religiopolitical party named the Tehrik‐i‐Nifaz‐i‐Fiqh‐i‐Jafaria (TNFJ, Movement for the Imposition of Jafari Jurisprudence) in 1979 .

Other smaller Islamic sects in Pakistan include the Ismailis and the Ahmadis. The Ismailis, who belong to a subsect of the main Ithna Ashari Shiite sect, are numerous in parts of Karachi (Pakistan's largest city) and parts of northern Pakistan. The Ismailis' spiritual leader, the Agha Khan, played a key role in the founding of the Muslim League at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some prominent members of the Punjabi political and the bureaucratic elite adhere to the teachings of the small Ahmadi (also known as Qadiani) sect founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d. 1908 ). Pakistan's first foreign minister Sir Zafarullah Khan belonged to this sect.

Role of Islam in Pakistan, 1947–1970.

Since 1947 , Pakistan has faced critical economic, political, and ethnoregional problems that continue to shape political developments and contribute to its chronic sociopolitical instability. At the ideological level, the issue that has generated the most controversy is the role of Islam in politics and the state. At independence, there was no general agreement among the Pakistani political elite on the kind of Islamic state Pakistan would be. It is evident from Jinnah's political speeches that he stood for the separation of religion and politics. Nevertheless, the ideological and political history of Pakistan has been marked by a continuous debate on the nature of the Islamic political system and its manifestation in constitutional structure and socioeconomic policies.

The ideological orientations and power imperatives of those who have controlled the state since its emergence—the higher echelons of the civil service, the military, the feudal landlords, and the urban‐based capitalist class—did not always coincide with those of the ulema and the fundamentalists, but the Pakistani ruling elite has used Islam as legitimizing force in order to consolidate its hold over the state.

Three distinct groups have played an important part in the controversies associated with the conception of an Islamic state and constitution since the early 1950s. These include the traditionalists, represented by the ulema of various schools of thought; the modernists, represented by politicians, westernized businessmen, and professionals; and senior civil servants and segments of military. The military has been a source of modernist as well as Islamic influences.

The diverse approaches to Islam in the regions that formed Pakistan accentuated the debate about what sort of Islamic state Pakistan should be. The provinces of northern India that constituted Pakistan were politically the most underdeveloped parts of British India. Feudal landholders who had prospered under British rule, in association with local Sufi‐oriented religious leaders, dominated West Pakistan's largest province, the Punjab. In Sind also, a feudal elite was well entrenched, while in Baluchistan and the NWFP, society was segmented on the basis of tribal relationships. Urdu‐speaking Muslim refugees from India settled mostly in Karachi. Despite being zealous supporters of Pakistan's “Islamic ideology” they developed their own distinct identity which was later represented in the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM, Refugee National Movement).

The majority of the political leadership of the new nation agreed that Pakistan's constitution and government should reflect the teachings and traditions of Islam. The problem was how to relate Islam to the needs of a modern state. The definition of an Islamic state formulated by the traditionalist and conservative fundamentalists or religious scholars assumed their own overarching authority in evaluating the Islamicity of all legislation. The most conservative insisted that laws and practices that conflicted with traditional interpretations of the Qur'ān and the Sunnah should be repealed or amended. Mawlānā Shabbīr Ahmad Usmānī , a respected Deobandi alim (scholar) who was appointed to the prestigious position of Shaykh al‐Islām of Pakistan, was the first to demand that Pakistan become an Islamic state. But Mawdūdī and his Jamāat‐i Islāmī played the central part in the demand for an Islamic constitution. Mawdūdī demanded that the Constituent Assembly make an unequivocal declaration affirming the “supreme sovereignty of God” and the supremacy of the Shariah as the basic law of Pakistan. Reformists and modernists advocated reinterpretation of Islamic laws in keeping with the needs of modern society.

The first important result of the combined efforts of the Jamāat‐i Islāmī and the ulema was the passage of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949 , whose formulation reflected compromise between traditionalists and modernists. The resolution embodied “the main principles on which the constitution of Pakistan is to be based.” It declared that “sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust,” that “the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed,” and that “the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accord with the teaching and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Qur'an and Sunna.” The Objectives Resolution has been reproduced as a preamble to the constitutions of 1956 , 1962 , and 1973 . The modernist Islamic imprint on Pakistan's political and constitutional structure was evident from the fact that the country retained English as the language of government and business. Urdu—the lingua franca of Indian Muslims although only spoken by about 8 percent of Pakistanis at the time, primarily those belonging to the Muhajir community that migrated from India after partition—was not used for official purposes in spite of being proclaimed the national language.

Pakistan's political system from 1947 to 1958 was characterized by weak institutionalization and a lack of standards of accountability and commitment to pluralism. Despite the rubric of Islamic solidarity, ethnic, sectarian, and linguistic differences persisted among Pakistan's diverse population. The Punjabis became the dominant ethnicity while Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns, and Bengalis also pressed their claims. These circumstances, coupled with Pakistan's hostile relations with India—Pakistan has fought four armed conflicts with India in 1947 – 1948 , 1965 , 1971 and 1999 —and intermittent security threats coming from ethnonationalist movements within the country, gradually enabled the military to gain ascendancy over the politicians by the late 1950s.

The military establishment and the bureaucracy inherited from the British colonial administration were the only organized state structures at the time of the creation of Pakistan. The chaos of Pakistani politics in the period 1951 – 1958 , coupled with constant demands for regional autonomy by the smaller provinces, tilted the balance in favor of the military‐bureaucratic establishment comprising senior military officials, civilian bureaucrats, and politicians hailing from the feudal classes. This facilitated the development of secular authoritarian rule backed by the military. Pakistan's first constitution, promulgated in 1956 , reflected the influence of secular principles and laws for the administration of a parliamentary democratic form of government with broad Islamic ideology as its guiding but non‐binding basis. Contrary to what the ulema and the Jamāat‐i Islāmī had been demanding, the constitution made the National Assembly responsible for deciding whether any law was in conflict with the Qur'ān and Sunnah. The legal system of the country continued to be based on English common law, with Islamic law limited to private, family matters, and accommodation of elements of tribal law as well.

Pakistan witnessed its first coup d'état under General Ayub Khan in October 1958 . The 1956 Constitution was abrogated by the martial‐law regime, and Ayub appointed himself president and announced a new constitution in 1962 that changed the name of the country from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the Republic of Pakistan. Later, however, as a result of the intense pressure from religious groups, the constitution was amended to restore the word “Islamic.” The new constitution retained most of the Islamic provisions of the 1956 constitution but did not make them mandatory.

During Ayub Khan's decade of modernization of Pakistan based upon a capitalistic development model ( 1959 – 1969 ), he launched intermittent intellectual assaults on the conservative ulema and the fundamentalist Jamāat‐i Islāmī and challenged the Islamic basis of their traditionally held views on the status of women, family and inheritance law, bank interest, the uncritical acceptance of hadīth as a source of Islamic law, taqlīd (the following of legal precedent established by the classical jurists), and a host of other doctrinal and jurisprudential issues. By the late 1960s, state power in Pakistan was essentially being wielded by a military‐bureaucratic establishment that accorded a privileged status to modernist interpretations of Islamic law—particularly with regard to social issues such as the status of women—to the consternation of conservative and traditionalist scholars. Pakistan's foreign policy in this period also reflected the perceptions of a mainly Westernized political elite as Pakistan aligned itself with the U.S. in the Cold War by joining anti‐Communist U.S.‐ backed military alliances in Asia, like the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO, dissolved in 1979 ) and South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO, dissolved in 1977 ).

Islamic Resurgence After 1971.

General Ayub Khan was forced to resign in March 1969 as a result of protests led largely by prodemocracy secular parties and student groups. He handed over power to General Yahya Khan . The Yahya regime, which issued its own Legal Framework Order (LFO) replacing the 1962 constitution, was, like its predecessor, still essentially a secular regime.

The traumatic events of the 1971 civil war and subsequent secession of East Pakistan (forming independent Bangladesh) had psychologically unsettling effects. The brutal civil war had demonstrated that ethnonationalism could override religious solidarity. This seriously undermined the Two Nation theory as a foundation on which to base a modern nation‐state. The attempt to construct Pakistani nationhood based on religious identity had failed. Bengali resentment of the Punjabi‐domination of the Pakistani state had acted as a catalyst for the emergence of Bengali ethnonationalism.

The experience of East Pakistan thus became a rallying point for many Pakistanis, especially the religious groups, to “return” to Islam as an ideological remedy to national malaise and to cultivate religious rejuvenation. The reemphasis on Islam was assisted by the civilian socialist‐oriented Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto ( 1929 – 1979 ) which came to power after the collapse of the Yahya regime. Bhutto used Pakistan's Islamic identity as a means of unifying a deeply divided nation. This post‐ 1971 rediscovery of Islamic identity in Pakistan also had great impact on the new constitution promulgated in 1973 by the Bhutto regime.

The 1973 constitution (which is still in effect although modified by successive regimes) placed greater emphasis on Islam than had previous constitutions. Islam was declared “the state religion” for the first time. While the 1956 and 1962 constitutions had had stipulated that only a Muslim could hold the office of president, the 1973 constitution extended that restriction to the office of the prime minister. The constitution also committed government officials to “strive to preserve the Islamic ideology which is the basis for the creation of Pakistan.” It stated that steps would be taken to enable the Muslims of Pakistan to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles of Islam based on the Holy Qur'ān and Sunnah. The constitution mandated compulsory Islamic studies in schools, promotion of the Arabic language, and publication of an “error‐free” Qur'ān. The constitution provided that the state would endeavor to secure the proper organization of zākat (obligatory charity tax) and awqaf (charitable endowments) and to eliminate ribā (interest). It also required that all existing laws should be brought into conformity with Islam, and reiterated that no law should be enacted which is repugnant to Islamic injunctions. The task of reviewing existing laws was entrusted to the Council of Islamic Ideology—created in 1962 and given its present name in 1973 —which was to make recommendations to the national and provincial legislatures.

In 1974 , Bhutto acceded to demands from orthodox ulema and the Jamāat‐i Islāmī by amending the constitution to declare the Ahmadis a non‐Muslim minority. Bhutto also established a separate federal Ministry of Religious Affairs to develop and supervise the teaching of Islamic studies, promote Islamic research, establish contacts with Islamic institutions in other countries, formulate policies for the management of awqaf, and make arrangements for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The Bhutto regime hosted the Second Islamic Summit Conference in Lahore in February 1974 , a turning point in Pakistan's renewed efforts to forge new cultural, political, and economic ties with the Muslim Middle East. In 1977 , in order to appease the ulema who had launched a mass movement to overthrow his government, Bhutto issued another set of Islamic reforms that included bans on alcoholic drinks, gambling, horse‐racing, and dance‐ and nightclubs. Although the Islamic measures introduced by Bhutto were piecemeal and peripheral to the core of his socioeconomic policies, their impact on subsequent Islamic development was significant. By incorporating extensive Islamic provisions in the 1973 constitution and declaring the Ahmadis non‐Muslims, Bhutto helped raise the expectations of the religious parties and prepared the ground for intensified “Islamization” programs under later regimes.

The Zia Regime and “Islamization.”

In July 1977 , the Pakistan army under the leadership of the Islamist‐oriented General Muhammad Zia‐ul‐Haq ( 1925 – 1988 ) overthrew the Bhutto regime. Zia was sympathetic to Jamaat‐i‐Islami. The Jamaat‐i‐Islami (JI) and the traditionalist Jamiyat‐i‐Ulama‐i‐Islam (JUI) had led the campaign against Bhutto. These two groups were an integral part of the right‐wing Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) which opposed the PPP government. The JI, JUI, and other smaller Islamic groups had as an overt goal the establishment in Pakistan of an “Islamic system,” Nizam‐i‐Mustafa (System of the Prophet Muhammad Mustafa), based on the Shariah.

In General Zia, the JI had, for the first time in Pakistan's troubled history, a leader inclined towards Mawdudi's interpretation of Islam. Zia unambiguously associated the identity of the Pakistani state with traditionally interpreted Sunni Islam. The allegiance to Islam of the mainstream military and political elite tended to be modernist, but articulation of Islamic rhetoric served to legitimize the armed forces' control over the Pakistani state. Hence, by using Islamic symbols, Zia tried to provide legitimacy to his regime, replacing Bhutto's populist brand of “Islamic socialism.” In fact, the military had Bhutto executed in April 1979 on a dubious murder charge.

Coming in the wake of the worldwide Islamic resurgence exemplified by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the jihad against the Soviet‐backed regime in Afghanistan, General Zia's Islamization measures, introduced from 1977 to 1988 in a series of laws and executive decrees, were much more substantive than those of earlier regimes. Working in close cooperation with the ulema and the Jamāat‐i Islāmī, Zia was able to create a network of state‐sponsored institutional structures to translate the norms of the Shariah into public policies. First, federal, provincial, and local institutions and committees were created for compulsory collection and distribution of zākat and ushr (an Islamic tax on produce of the land), a long‐standing demand of the religious groups. Second, a Federal Shariah Court was established with power to decide whether laws were consistent with the injunctions of Islam. Third and most important, Islamic penal law (hudūd) with specific Islamic punishments (such as stoning for adultery and amputation of the hand for theft) was introduced. Fourth, measures were taken to eliminate ribā from the banking system and the economy. Fifth, school textbooks were revised to reflect traditional Islamic views, and an International Islamic University was established in Islamabad to promote higher Islamic learning.

General Zia criticized democracy as an importation from the West and in its stead upheld Islam as the basis of legitimacy. In 1988 , he issued a comprehensive Shariah Ordinance subsuming most of his earlier Islamic reform measures and incorporating further measures for the Islamization of the economy, society, culture, and education. Yet, despite the euphoria generated among the regime's supporters, “Islamization” in Pakistan was in fact being imposed by a military regime. Several Islamic groups were critical of the method, scope, and effectiveness of Zia's reforms, while other sectors saw the whole process of Islamization by the military regime as a cynical exploitation of the religious sentiments of the Muslim masses for political goals.

The Zia regime used the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979 to further strengthen its Islamic credentials. Pakistani Islamic groups were encouraged to organize an anti‐Soviet jihad in Afghanistan by assisting the Afghan Islamic groups which had established their base in Pakistan. The Afghan jihad was to have far‐reaching implications for the evolution of radical Islamism in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The financial and material assistance to the Afghan Islamist cause provided by the U.S., and by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab states motivated thousands of Islamists from the Arab countries to come to Pakistan and fight the Soviets. Among these Arab Islamists was Osama bin Laden who would later create a militant anti‐Western Islamic organization, Al‐Qa῾ida, from the cadres that had come to Pakistan to fight the anti‐Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

The period 1977 – 1988 witnessed the consolidation of the dominance of the armed forces over the state and its role as the protector of Pakistan's Islamic “ideological” and geographical frontiers. The “army” and “Islam” became synonymous for the preservation of Pakistani national integrity. This period also witnessed a phenomenal growth in the number of madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan while most of the mainstream education system retained its Western character, especially at the secondary and university levels. The growth in the madrassas catered especially to the educational needs of the poorer and more traditional segments of society in a country where more than 60 percent of the total population remains illiterate.

Madrassas have traditionally been the centers of classical Islamic studies in South Asia. Since the advent of Islam in the Indian Subcontinent between the tenth and twelfth centuries A.D., the madrassa system has played an important historical role by preserving traditional Islam and training generations of Islamic religious scholars and functionaries. Unlike most Middle Eastern Muslim countries, the network of mosques and madrassas in Pakistan has generally operated outside state control, despite attempts by the state to weaken their independence. Most madrassas in Pakistan are supported either by private religious endowments (awqaf) or by donations from the faithful. The financial autonomy of the mosques and madrassas has been a major source of the independent political power of the ulema.

The madrassas in Pakistan teach a curriculum known as Dārs‐i‐Nizāmi, a standard course of study (devised in the eighteenth century) for all Sunni madrassas of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It consists of about twenty subjects, broadly divided into the transmitted sciences (al‐ulūm al‐naqlīyah) and the rational sciences (al‐ulūm al‐aqlīyah). However, the Zia regime's “Islamization” dramatically altered madrassa education in Pakistan, boosting the influence of Deobandi madrassas. These madrassas taught a politically conservative interpretation of Islam with emphasis on jihad and rejection of innovation in Islamic law, thereby inculcating in many students an intolerant attitude not only toward other religions but also toward other Islamic sects.

The Decade of Civilian Rule: 1988–1999.

General Zia and some of his senior military commanders died in a mysterious plane crash in August 1988 . This development led to the installation of a civilian government under Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto . Benazir Bhutto (b. 1951 ) became the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim country. Nevertheless, her powers, like those of her successors, were restricted by the role of the military in the political process. Despite the façade of democratic rule, the military maintained its lead role in the formulation of Pakistan's overall domestic and foreign policy. Both the Pakistan Peoples Party administration of Benazir Bhutto (from December 1988 to August 1990 , and from October 1993 to November 1996 ) and the Muslim League administration of Muhammad Nawaz Sharif (from November 1990 to April 1993 , and from February 1997 to October 1999 ) had to contend with the dominance of the military establishment in matters pertaining to national security.

The post‐Zia civilian regimes were unsuccessful in reconciling the demands of the ulema for imposition of Islamic law with reformist demands for a pluralistic multiethnic society. Although Pakistan's main Islamist parties have considerable popular appeal, they have never been garnered strong electoral support. They won only two parliamentary seats in the National Assembly in 1993 and 1997 , but these parties, with the backing of the military establishment, maintained pressure on the weak civilian regimes for imposition of the Shariah. Thus, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif introduced a Shariah Bill in April 1991 , providing for a series of legislative and administrative measures to further Islamize education, the mass media, the economy, the bureaucracy, and the legal system; this bill was not approved by the parliament. Again, in 1998 , the Sharif government proposed a fifteenth amendment to the 1973 Constitution to impose the Shariah as the supreme law of Pakistan. The Shariah amendments would have superseded all constitutional and common‐law provisions by empowering the executive to issue binding directives concerning permitted and forbidden conduct under Islamic teachings. Despite strong pressure from the Islamists, a majority of the senate opposed this bill.

One important result of the Islamization process was heightened sectarianism. The introduction of zākat and ushr and the enforcement of other Shariah laws brought to the surface doctrinal and juristic differences between Shiite and Sunnīs. The question as to which interpretation of Islamic law should form the basis of public policy became a major source of conflict both between Sunni and Shiite ulema and among different schools of Sunnis. These controversies have caused frequent violent incidents, including sectarian riots and the assassination of several prominent Sunni and Shiite ulema in Pakistan since the late 1980s.

Also, the proliferation of madrassas and the Pakistani state's support for jihad in Afghanistan as well as Kashmir in the 1990s led to the formation of numerous Deobandi‐influenced Sunni factions such as Lashkar‐i‐Tayyiba, Jaish‐i‐Muhammad , Harakat‐ul‐ Mujahideen and Harakat‐ul‐Ansar which formed armed groups in Pakistani‐administered Kashmir to wage a “liberation struggle” in Indian‐administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Besides Pakistan's conflict with India over Kashmir, the Pakistani military's association with Afghan jihad contributed to the emergence of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan from 1994 on. The Taliban's genesis is associated with the rise of hundreds of madrassas in Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s. The Deobandi madrassas at Akora Khattak in the NWFP, and in Karachi, Baluchistan, and the tribal areas of the NWFP were the alma mater of more than half of the Taliban leadership. The emergence of the Taliban phenomenon in Afghanistan between 1994 and 2001 facilitated the growth of dozens of Islamic factions within Pakistan that viewed the Taliban's version of Islam—which was based upon an eradication of pre‐Islamic cultural mores and symbols—as the solution to the multifaceted social, political, and economic problems faced by Pakistan.

The Musharraf Era.

On October 12, 1999 , the Pakistan army under the leadership of General Pervez Musharraf carried out its third bloodless coup in the country's then fifty‐two‐year history by arresting the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif , and declaring a state of emergency. General Musharraf portrayed his regime as reformist and determined to deal with the political and economic problems faced by Pakistan. Musharraf, an admirer of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the secular Turkish republic, emphasized the promotion of a moderate form of Islam. He enunciated the concept of “enlightened moderation” which emphasized that Islam is a moderate religion, opposed to militancy and obscurantism. Initially, the military regime took some measures to curb the activities of Islamic militants. However, in 2000 , General Musharraf withdrew his proposal to reform the procedural aspects of the Blasphemy Laws (which seek the death penalty for any person accused of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad) in the face of the threat of mass protests from Islamists. Moreover, the Musharraf regime continued to support the Taliban in Afghanistan until September 11, 2001 .

The 9/11 terrorists attacks in the U.S. and Pakistan's subsequent alliance with the U.S. in the “War on Terror” compelled the Pakistan army to curtail the support it had provided to Islamic groups based primarily on its geostrategic and security objectives in Afghanistan and India. Under U.S. pressure, the Musharraf regime took wide‐ranging measures against various Islamist groups in Pakistan and assisted the U.S. in apprehending hundreds of operatives belonging to Osama bin Laden's Al‐Qa῾ida organization. In January 2002 , General Musharraf pledged to cease Pakistani support for Islamic insurgents in Kashmir and Afghanistan and banned key Sunni and Shiite militant groups, although some continued to function under changed names.

Just as the military under General Zia had transformed Pakistan into a “frontline” state against Soviet expansionism, General Musharraf declared Pakistan a “frontline state against terrorism” and Islamic extremism. The Pakistan army's action against Al‐Qa῾ida suspects and their backers in the North West Frontier Province's tribal areas between 2002 and 2007 has led to a growing resentment against the Musharraf regime in these Pashtun regions. Nevertheless, the Musharraf regime, despite its pro‐Western orientation, has like past Pakistani military regimes, been able to withstand the challenges posed by Pakistani Islamic groups by either coopting them in government or selectively controlling their political activity. The Islamist parties' ambiguous approach towards the military‐controlled political system in Pakistan was evident when the JUI and JI tacitly consented to General Musharraf's alteration of the 1973 constitution and his introduction of the Legal Framework Order (LFO) of 2002 that essentially transformed the Pakistani political system from a parliamentary to a presidential one. Amendments to the constitution have entrenched the role of the military by creating a military‐controlled National Security Council. The LFO did not mention the role of Islam in the national polity.

Like the regime of Ayub Khan , the Musharraf era has also witnessed the alliance of moderate Islamic modernist parties such as the various factions of the Pakistan Muslim League, the PPP, and secularist, feudal, and business groups with the ruling military‐dominated oligarchy. Moreover, paternalistic relations, tribal and feudal, that historically have influenced the political process—especially in the NWFP, Baluchistan, and rural areas of the Sind and Punjab—have continued. This has helped stem Islamist as well as secular opposition to General Musharraf's serving as army chief and president simultaneously since 2001 .

Nevertheless, despite the secular orientation of the military‐led Pakistani leadership, madrassas belonging to Deobandis, Barelwis, Shiites, the JI, and others have continued to flourish. The government issued a Madrassa Registration Ordinance in June 2002 to control foreign funding, improve curricula including the teaching of “secular” subjects, and prohibit training in the use of arms. However, most religious groups and parties have rejected these tentative governmental reforms.

Social and economic factors and the government's failure to enact widespread educational reform have contributed to the continued popularity of the madrassa system. The country's annual population growth rate of nearly 2 percent, with 35 percent of the population earning less than the $1.00 per day minimum established by the World Bank, has permitted madrassas to to become a leading source of education and minimal social welfare for a large part of the impoverished urban and rural population. In 2004 – 2005 , the government estimated there were 13,000 seminaries in Pakistan—unofficial estimates range between 15,000 and 25,000, and in some cases as high as 40,000—with an enrollment of about 1.5 million students.

Since the military‐controlled national elections held in 2002 , an Islamist coalition known as Muttahida Majlis‐e‐Amal (MMA, United Action Forum) comprising the JUI, JI, the Shiite Tehrik‐i‐Islami (successor of the TNFJ) and some minor factional groups, has run the provincial government in the NWFP. The MMA backed the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan ( 1995 – 2001 ) and the Taliban's opposition to the Western military presence in Afghanistan since November 2001 . The MMA seeks to replicate in Pakistan the enforcement of Islamic laws seen in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The MMA Islamists are virulently opposed to the U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan and are critical of the Musharraf regime's alliance with the U.S., especially Pakistani army operations targeting the Taliban and Al‐Qa῾ida militants in the mountainous Pakistan‐Afghanistan border region. The MMA passed a Shariah bill and a Hasba (accountability) bill in the NWFP in 2003 . The Musharraf regime, however, feared that this would create a parallel legal body, and the implementation of these bills was prevented by a government challenge in the Supreme Court. The Musharraf regime has tried to retain control of the MMA by coopting some of its members into the military‐backed leadership of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid‐i‐Azam) faction.

Islamic laws enacted during the Zia era have remained largely intact under the Musharraf regime. Despite General Musharraf's policy of “enlightened moderation,” his regime's authoritarian rule backed by military coercion has further eroded the vestiges of Pakistan's civil institutions and governance based on the rule of law and on parliamentary supremacy. The military's sidelining of the mainstream secular‐oriented PPP and the Muslim League has greatly benefited the Islamist groups, which remain among the best organized political forces in Pakistan, although they lack the unity and common ideological platform necessary to challenge the military‐dominated state.

The Musharraf regime's attempts to curb Islamic militancy in Pakistan has accentuated the division between a relatively Westernized ruling elite and the growing number of Islamist groups. However, the Pakistani political elite's policy of selectively coopting some of these groups within the state structures indicates its ambivalent attitude toward the so‐called “Talibanization” of some segments of Pakistani society. The post‐9/11 developments in Afghanistan and the army's attempt to curb Islamic extremism in Pakistan have created resentment and a sense of alienation among some Islamic groups that had received the patronage of the state during the preceding two decades.

Six decades after the emergence of Pakistan, the struggle over the role of Islam in the state remains unresolved. While the debates over Islam have continued, the real government in Pakistan has remained in the hands of an elite comprising the military, feudal landowners, and some business interests. The army's political stake in maintaining the status quo and deflecting attempts to establish civilian supremacy over the military from the early 1950s to the present has persisted. Even during the periods of quasidemocratic rule in 1947 – 1958 , 1972 – 1977 and 1988 – 1999 , national security decision‐making remained dominated by the military. In this respect, Pakistan has sometimes been considered an “overdeveloped state” (by developing‐world standards), in which a relatively strong state apparatus controlled by a military‐bureaucratic establishment exercises hegemony over the people.

Closely connected with the domination of the military over the state has been the use of Islam as a binding force for national unity. Since independence, successive regimes have used Islam to legitimize their rule. The political elites have usually communicated with the masses in the name of Islam over the heads of the religious establishment and selectively patronized and sponsored the ulema.

In the context of foreign policy, the emphasis on the Islamic character of the state has given the Pakistani political and military elites reason to confront India and enabled them to maintain relatively close relations with Muslim states having radically different political systems, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran. On the other hand, the assertion of “Islamic identity” since the 1970s has not significantly affected Pakistan's pro‐Western foreign policy or its long‐standing security relationship with the People's Republic of China. Even the growing U.S. engagement with India in the post‐Cold War era has not substantially affected Pakistan's multifaceted relationship with the U.S. The U.S. government's classification of Pakistan as a “major non‐NATO ally” in 2004 was an acknowledgment of country's pivotal role in the “War on Terror.” By late 2006 , Pakistan had received $4.75 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance.

Pakistan also continues to struggle with ethnic tensions. The tight grip on the state maintained by the Punjabi‐dominated military—Punjab accounts for more than 57 percent of the total population of Pakistan—has encouraged frequent ethnic and tribal dissent from the Muhajir, Pashtun, Baloch, and Sindhi nationalities over the past two decades. Since 2002 Baluchistan province (which borders Iran) and the tribal areas of the NWFP have witnessed low‐level insurgencies against the federal government. There is also increasing opposition to military‐dominated policies from various secular, ethnic, and Islamic groups in southern Punjab, Sindh, and Pakistani‐administered northern areas as well. Even so, Islam remains important in attempts to define the Pakistani identity.

See also Aḥmad Khān, Sayyid ; Aḥmadīya; All‐India Muslim League; Al‐Qa῾ida; Ameer Ali, Syed ; Barelwīs; Bin Laden, Osama ; International Islamic University at Islamabad; Iqbal, Muhammad ; Ismāʿīlīyah; Jam῾īyatul‐῾Ulamā'‐i Pākistān; Jinnah, Mohammad Ali ; Mawdūdī, Sayyid Abū al‐A῾lā ; Shīʿī Islam; and Wahhābīyah

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