From Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, ed. Robert Wuthnow. 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998), 587-590.

Pakistan

Pakistan was created in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims of South Asia. With an estimated population of 150 million, it is the world's second largest Muslim country after Indonesia. Today it is an avowedly Islamic republic, wherein Islamic standards dominate national political discourse and influence discussions about democratization, economic reform, and state-society relations.

Pakistan was the culmination of the Muslim demand for separatism at the twilight of British rule in India. Many Muslims, including thinkers like Abul-Kalam Azad (d. 1958) and religious institutions such as the Jam'iat-i Ulama-i Hind (Society of Indian Ulama), remained involved in the independence movement under the leadership of the Indian Congress Party. Others followed intellectuals such as Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) and politicians such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah (d. 1948) in the Muslim League; they questioned the belief that the struggle against the British ought to be the paramount concern of Muslims. These Muslims were apprehensive about living as a minority in a predominantly Hindu state and sought to safeguard and further Muslim communal interests before an uncertain future.

For the leaders of the Pakistan movement, however, Muslim nationalism was not so much a religious notion as a communal one. Himself secular, Jinnah wanted to identify Muslims as a people belonging to a distinct cultural group and sharing a common identity separate from that of the majority population. The promise of Pakistan for Jinnah lay not in its religious potential, but in the fact that it would serve as a political arena in which a Muslim's aspirations would not be limited by his identity. But Jinnah was not able to keep Pakistan a secular ideal. The separatist struggle, especially during its last phase, was compelled to appeal to Islamic symbols to mobilize public support, opening the door to thinking of Pakistan as an Islamic ideal.

Soon after Pakistan was created, the place of Islam in the national political discourse was put to debate. The secular political elite at first resisted giving Islam a role in national politics. But a state built in the name of Islam and as a Muslim homeland and confronted with insurmountable ethnic, linguistic, and class conflicts, economic collapse, a serious refugee problem, and war with India quickly succumbed to the temptation of mobilizing Islamic symbols in the service of state formation. This practice was only reinforced over the years as the state failed to address fundamental socioeconomic issues, carry out meaningful land reform, and contend with ethnic and provincial demands and consolidate power in the center.

Islam and the Secular State

The turn to Islam opened the door for Islamic parties to enter the fray. They have disagreed over how to create an Islamic state, but their collective as well as their independent activities strengthened the impetus for Islamization. The secular state resisted this trend only briefly. By 1949 the elite had accepted a political role for Islamic forces, compromising their original conception of Pakistan as a thoroughly secular state. In that year the government adopted the Objectives Resolution, which Islamic forces demanded as a statement of intent for the future constitution. The resolution formally introduced Islamic concerns into constitutional debates. Subsequent state policy, culminating in the constitution of 1956, only reinforced this trend. As a result, by the end of Pakistan's first decade Islamic forces were fully included in its politics and had moved to appropriate the national political discourse from the state.

Although the state accepted a place for Islamic forces in national politics it was not willing to abandon secularism or to permit Islamization of society and politics outside its direct control. The government therefore resorted to regulating the flow of Islam in politics, hoping gradually to negotiate arrangements with Islamic parties to that effect. But frictions and confrontations, the most notable and significant of which was the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of 1953-1954, pitted the state against Islamic forces.

In 1953 Islamic forces demanded that the Ahmadiyya sect, which Muslims consider outside the pale of Islam, be declared a non-Muslim minority and Pakistan's Ahmadi foreign minister, Sir Chaudhri Zafaru'llah Khan, be dismissed from his post. They argued that if Pakistan was an Islamic polity, then the Ahmadiyya could not enjoy full rights in it. The dispute put the Islamicness of the state into question and enabled Islamic forces to force the government to more clearly commit itself to Islamization. The government reacted by imposing martial law and arresting and trying anti-Ahmadi religious activists on charges of sedition.

The strong government reaction did not, however, end the problem inherent in a secular government seeking to use Islam selectively to shore up its authority. After the constitution of 1956 formally committed Pakistan to some form of Islamicness, declaring the state an Islamic republic, Islamic forces once again demanded adoption of Islamic laws and precepts.

Resisting Islam

The government of General Muhammad Ayub Khan (1958-1969), which assumed power after a military coup, sought to resolve the Islamist problem once and for all. Soon after he assumed office, Ayub Khan attacked Islamic parties and institutions. His government sought to redefine the ideology of the state and to anchor it in his vision of development in lieu of Islam. His government nationalized religious endowments and assumed guardianship of religious shrines, restricted religious education, introduced a new secular family law, and in the constitution of 1962 removed "Islamic" from the official name of the state. Ayub Khan was not able to completely subdue Islamic forces or to undo the preceding decade's gradual politicization of Islam and Islamization of politics. And it was evident that as a Muslim homeland, Pakistan would always have to be defined, in some degree, in Islamic terms.

Unable to extricate Islam from politics, Ayub Khan accepted its involvement but then sought to define Islam along modernist lines. He encouraged thinkers such as Fazlur Rahman (d. 1986) and Khalifah Abdul Hakim (d. 1966) and such forums as the Islamic Research Institute and Institute of Islamic Culture to formulate a modernist interpretation of Islam to undergird state ideology and provide a different relationship between Islam and Pakistan. State patronage of Islamic modernism increased tensions with Islamic forces, who refused to be marginalized and relinquish the right to interpret Islam to the state. These forces organized resistance to Ayub Khan's policies and ultimately contributed to his fall in 1969.

The Ayub Khan regime collapsed before a rising tide of prodemocracy and leftist activism across Pakistan and ethnic nationalism in East Pakistan. The growing influence of the left and the appeal of ethnic identities in lieu of loyalty to the Islamic state put to question the role of Islam in Pakistan. The civil war of 1971, which brought the separation of East Pakistan into the independent state of Bangladesh, however, led many Pakistanis to turn to Islam for solace. They faulted the military, its misguided policies, and its secularism for the loss of East Pakistan.

Throughout the 1970s Islamic activism would gain ground, dominating student politics, labor unions, and professional associations. It would evolve into the main voice of dissent, eventually drowning leftist ideology and putting on the defensive the populist government of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1971-1977). The prime minister, who had risen to power on the crest of a widely popular left-of-center movement, eventually adopted the demands of the Islamic opposition. It was Bhutto who finally declared the Ahmadiyya a non-Muslim minority in 1974 and in 1977 banned the serving of alcohol, closed casinos and nightclubs, and prohibited gambling and all other social activities proscribed by Islamic law. He had hoped that by surrendering to the demands of the Islamic groups he could mollify them. But Islamic parties were in no mood to be placated. They were now determined to use Islam to take over power. They continued the anti-Bhutto campaign, which ended only when the military, under the command of General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, staged a coup in July 1977.

Harnessing the Power of Islam

During the Zia period (1977-1988) the state adopted a radically different approach to the role of Islam in public life. Zia was himself a devout Muslim, but more important, he understood that the state would gain more by harnessing the energies of the Islamic forces than by resisting them. He was, however, careful to protect the position of the state and to keep Islamic forces under state control. Zia opened state institutions and policy making to Islamic movements. The bureaucracy and the military became more openly Islamic, the state provided patronage to an array of Islamic activities, and Islam colored its policy making. In the process, Zia co-opted Islamic forces and protected the supreme position of the state. To do so the state itself became the initiator of Islamization, which was introduced through a series of legal and policy initiatives in 1979-1984.

The Islamization package included the introduction of Islamic penal, commercial, and inheritance laws and religious taxes and public observance of Islamic strictures, especially in women's dress. Zia's initiatives had a greater influence as Pakistan became an integral part of the Islamically charged anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Co-opting Islamic forces, however, was not always easy, nor did it completely resolve the dilemma of controlling Islamization and its advocates. Zia proved willing to accept a greater sociopolitical role for Islamic forces and to give them considerable power and autonomy of action but only in matters that were limited to religious questions. Hence, symbolic measures such as selective application of Islamic penal laws, ceremonial applications of Islam's anti-usury laws, addition of the adjective "Islamic" to the titles of a whole host of programs and institutions, patronage of religious seminaries, festivals, and institutions, paying greater lip-service to Islam, restriction of social activities of women and minorities, and application of Islamic law in issues pertaining to personal conduct abounded.

The state, however, guarded its political and economic turf jealously. For instance, although Zia instituted a Federal Shari'at Court to review the compatibility of all laws with Islamic dictums, he was careful to exclude economic questions that would affect state policy from the court's activities. The state kept Islamization at bay and ran its affairs with the aid of the same constellation of social classes and interest groups, and in the same manner, that it had since 1947. Moreover, the state's tight control limited the power and autonomy that the Islamic parties enjoyed. Zia successfully prevented Islamic parties from exercising power independently of his regime, and especially in lieu of his authority. He resisted holding elections during the months immediately following the coup, when the Islamic parties might have fared well and found an independent base of support.

Meanwhile, through his patronage of Islamization Zia gained legitimacy and institutionalized his regime. He used the state's open advocacy of Islamization to control and even silence the Islamic parties, to postpone elections repeatedly, and to resist real economic and political changes or the meaningful restructuring of state policies. The fact that the state was so openly Islamic placed the Islamic parties in a very difficult position. In fact, Zia's pro-Islamization strategy divided Islamic activists over the extent to which they ought to support this champion of Islam even as he kept them under tight control and manipulated the role of Islam in politics. As a result, Zia deftly kept the Islamic parties in line without transferring real power to them.

During the Zia period Pakistan became more Islamic, levels of public observance increased, and Islam influenced all aspects of public policy and political interactions. Islamization did not, however, alter the country's sociopolitical structure and economic regime. After Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988 and Pakistan moved swiftly toward democracy, economic grievances, ethnic tensions, and rivalries among the elite determined the political dynamics. Islam continued to influence politics but decreasingly and no longer directly. For a time Islamic parties wielded some power in the democratic arena but were eventually overshadowed by the rise to prominence of the Muslim League, which since 1993 has successfully created a broad right-of-center coalition that includes the Islamic vote but is not an exclusively Islamic party, further constricting the avowedly Islamic parties. In fact, many activists have turned to militancy, looking to the radical Taliban movement in Afghanistan as the model to follow.

After five decades of statehood, there is little doubt that Islam is important to Pakistan's identity and influences the country's politics. How exactly popular piety and religious activism shape the relationship between Islam and the state has become more complex with time, so that in this Muslim homeland, Islam is ubiquitous in public life, but Islamic parties are weak. Commitment to Islam is strong but is little reflected in the real political, economic, and social struggles in the country. The state has struggled with Islam; first resisting its influence, then suppressing it, but eventually learning to coexist with it, and even to control it.

See also Afghanistan; India; Iqbal, Muhammad; Islam, Southeast Asia; Jinnah, Muhammad.

Author: Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr

Bibliography

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