The Islamization of Pakistan: 1979-2009
Since 2007, Pakistan, though not on the verge of becoming a failed state, nonetheless has been gripped by a series of interrelated crises. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Pakistan’s current travails have deep and tangled historical roots. They also demonstrate that Pakistan’s domestic situation historically has been influenced by, and has affected developments in neighboring countries as well as those farther afield.
What follows is the list of individual articles published in the Journal. You can also download the full publication by clicking here:
Post-1979 Pakistan: What Went Wrong? by Touqir Hussain
No single year has reflected and effected more significant changes in the Islamic world than 1979. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran were epicenters as well as tributaries, and confluences of the history-making events of that year. Read More
Pakistan’s Reverse Revolution by Imtiaz Gul
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 marked the beginning of a painful journey for Pakistan that has culminated in a reverse socio-political revolution on two counts. First, instead of reaping rich dividends from a partnership with the United States that engineered the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, Pakistan today faces its gravest security challenge, as some of the forces with which it had partnered to defeat the Soviets and later used to force the Indians out of Kashmir are biting back. Second, post-revolutionary Iran’s expanding cultural presence and influence engendered a Saudi Salafist counter-reaction, thereby turning Pakistan into a battleground for a Saudi-Iranian proxy war which sowed the seeds of sectarian acrimony and violence between the country’s minority Shi‘a and majority Sunni populations. Read More
Pakistan: Reclaiming the Founding Moment by Suroosh Irfani
Rooted in a democratic struggle that ended British rule in the subcontinent, there was something remarkable about Pakistan’s emergence on August 14, 1947 as a sovereign Muslim state. This was as much reflected in the founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s address to Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly as in its national anthem and flag celebrating Pakistan’s founding moment. Jinnah’s speech set the direction for Pakistan as a modern democratic state, where religion was a personal matter that had “nothing to do with the business of the state,” and people could creatively rework a divisive past for a promising future. Read More
Reclaiming Pakistan's Pacifist Religious Creed by Ishtiaq Ahmad
If there is a cut-off point in the 62-year life of Pakistan, a country created in the name of Islam by secular Muslim leadership, it is 1979. For whatever traditionally pacifist sub-continental Islamic creed with a strong Persian influence that the country had retained since the partition of 1947 effectively ended that year. Since then, until the rise of al-Qa‘ida/Wahhabi-inspired Taliban extremism and terrorism in recent years, Pakistan has seen the consistent erosion of the broadly inclusive religious tradition it had inherited from the pre-independence Subcontinent — a heritage, in particular, of the centuries of Muslim rule under the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. Read More
Moving beyond “Islamic by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
Throughout the Cold War period, and even more so after it, American scholars have attempted to understand Muslim societies. Every decade has brought with it new paradigms, although the broad tendency has been towards a limiting, and thus problematic, cultural essentialism. Since the beginning of the “War on Terror,” this tendency unfortunately has been reinforced, thanks in large part to the Bush Administration’s words and actions; the atrocious term “Islamo-fascism” comes to mind. Read More
The Islamization of Pakistan’s Educational System: 1979-1989 by Nasim Ashraf
The decade of 1979-1989 can be viewed as the turning point for Pakistan’s educational system. It was the bedrock on which militant extremism was founded, and has left indelible imprints on the Pakistani nation. Religion was the justification given by General Zia ul-Haq to legitimize his dictatorship, as well as to consolidate his rule, which spanned more than 11 years. Coupled with geopolitical and sectarian struggles, Zia’s Islamization reforms completely transformed the educational system of Pakistan. Read More
Jamaat e Islami by Farhat Haq
Nineteen seventy-nine was a momentous year for the Jamaat-e Islami in Pakistan. Maulana Maududi, whose writings provided both the financial and intellectual foundation for the party, died after a long bout with kidney disease in Buffalo, New York. The same year, the arch-nemesis of the Jamaat, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, became a victim of what most Pakistanis considered a judicial murder at the hands of its erstwhile ally, General Zia ul-Haq. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution proved to be equally important in shaping Jamaat’s role in Pakistani politics and its participation in Sunni Islamist politics. After 1979 the Jamaat became less of what it always had viewed itself to be — the vanguard of Islamic Revolution — and more what its opponents had often accused it of being, an opportunistic player willing to make compromises with authoritarian leaders to gain political advantages. Read More
The Legacy of Bhutto and Zia’s Contending Visions and Security Policies by Lawrence Ziring
The war perpetrated by the Pakistani army in 1971 against its own Bengali population came to an end only through New Delhi’s intervention and the resulting loss of East Pakistan. The now-contiguous Pakistan that re-emerged in 1972, brought to power a new government dominated by civilians and led by the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and a new army commander, General Zia ul-Haq. This essay examines Bhutto’s and Zia’s contending visions for the newly reconstructed Pakistan, their differing approaches to the Kashmir dispute, and the long-lasting consequences of their actions. Read More
Imperialism, Extremism, and the Withering State by Imran Ali
The multiple crises that Pakistan faces in the post-Musharraf period appear to be of an amost existential nature. The resumption of a democratically elected civilian government following the elections of February 2008, and the subsequent removal of Musharraf in mid-2008, have failed to alleviate the sense of crisis, but rather have elevated it to even the level of chaos for certain Western analysts. Read More
Upheaval in West and South Asia: Public Opinion in Pakistan by Ijaz Shafi Gilani
The year 1979 was a time of great upheaval throughout Asia. Given the importance of the critical events of that year to Pakistan and the wider region, it is interesting to examine in retrospect how the Pakistani public at the time perceived them. This essay first sets the context for exploring these public attitudes. It then summarizes Pakistani opinion on major foreign policy and domestic issues, drawing upon the surveys carried out by the author under the auspices of the Pakistan Institute of Public Opinion, the Pakistani affiliate of the Gallup International Association during the year 1979. Read More
Pakistan’s Non-Proliferation Policy by Zulfqar Khan
Since 1979, Pakistan has emerged as a nuclear weapons state. A great deal of attention has focused recently on just three aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear program: the 1998 nuclear tests, the revelations surrounding the activities of A.Q. Khan, and the issue of the security of nuclear materials and facilities in the face of the country’s battle against extremists. As a result, the longevity and extensiveness not only of the nuclear program, but also of Pakistan’s non-proliferation efforts have been obscured. Read More
Thirty Years after 1979: Is Pakistan Changing Its Strategic Paradigm? by Jean-Luc Racine
While the partition of the British Raj was supposed to offer the Muslims of India, along with a new country, the solution to their problems, the first war between India and Pakistan started as early as 1947, under the guise of what later became one of the classic modes of operation of the State of Pakistan: “free” militias supposed to fight on their own to liberate Kashmir. After two more wars (in 1965 and 1971), Kashmir constantly was defined as “the core issue” to be resolved before the relationship between India and Pakistan could be normalized. Read More
The Pakistani Shi‘a by Hassan Abbas
The Shi‘a Muslims of Pakistan, constituting roughly 18-20% of the country’s 170 million inhabitants, are a vibrant and energetic minority. Shi‘a financial and political leaders, including Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah, played important roles in the Pakistan movement of the 1940s. Since then, they largely have remained part of the political mainstream. Traditionally, they have been well represented in the country’s civilian and military power structures, and in the media. Read More
Sindh’s Ethnic Predicament and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) by Moonis Ahmar
Sindh, the second most populous province after Punjab, is a complex ethnic mosaic. Inter-ethnic tensions in the province, and particularly in its capital city of Karachi, are rising, primarily due to the influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the conflict zones of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Malakand Division of Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) following the recent anti-terrorist military operation. The arrival of these IDPs in Sindh has triggered a widespread nationalist backlash, placing at risk the stability of the province and Pakistan itself. Read More
Baluchistan: A Hotbed for Insurgency by Syed Farooq Hasnat
Any uneasiness, disturbance, or uprising in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province is considered a national security concern with regional and international implications. This strategically important province borders Iran and Afghanistan and has a coastline of 750 kilometers, stretching from Hab (near Karachi) to the port of Gwadar (being built with Chinese assistance) along the Arabian Sea. The westernmost part of Baluchistan is not far from the Strait of Hormuz.1 The province is rich in minerals; the country’s largest natural gas reserve (in Sui) is located there. Baluchistan is also the homeland of the aggressive Bugti tribe. Read More
Sectarianism in Pakistan: A Profile of Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) by Tahir Kamran
There are a number of general studies of sectarianism in Pakistan,1 most of which link increased sectarianism with Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization, the Afghan War, the proliferation of Deobandi madrasas, and the Iranian Revolution. This essay shows how sectarian mobilization intersected with and competed with biraderi (patrilinear kinship networks) politics in the district of Jhang, a city in southeastern Punjab. It also situates sectarian militancy within the context of a rising urban commercial class that was locked out of political power by landowners who traditionally dominated district politics. Read More
Decades of Disaster: Islamization and the Women of Pakistan by Rubina Saigol
General Zia ul-Haq rode to power on the back of the Nizam-e Mustapha [System of the Prophet] movement led by religious parties against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government and its alleged rigging in the 1977 elections. Having seized power illegally on the pretext of establishing an Islamic system, General Zia harnessed a conservative and fundamentalist notion of Islam to provide legitimacy to his unconstitutional regime. He relied on the Deobandi Jamaat-e Islami’s interpretation of religion to impose his will on the country. Read More
Women’s Rights in Pakistan by Anita M. Weiss
Two momentous events occurred in Pakistan in 1979 that continue to have implications for women’s rights: the promulgation of Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization program (including the Hudood Ordinance)1 and the creation of the Women’s Division (precursor to the Ministry for Women’s Development) in response to international pressure during the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-85). These two actions provoked contradictory political enterprises, namely those which demand that the state incorporate more laws and institutions derived from or at least associated with Islam, and those which demand the rights of women along the lines of those advocated within the global community. Read More
Table of Contents
Maps
Bibliography
Middle East Journal's chronology: Pakistan in 1979
The Islamization of Pakistan: 1979-2009
Since 2007, Pakistan, though not on the verge of becoming a failed state, nonetheless has been gripped by a series of interrelated crises. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Pakistan’s current travails have deep and tangled historical roots. They also demonstrate that Pakistan’s domestic situation historically has been influenced by, and has affected developments in neighboring countries as well as those farther afield.
What follows is the list of individual articles published in the Journal. You can also download the full publication by clicking here:
Post-1979 Pakistan: What Went Wrong? by Touqir Hussain
No single year has reflected and effected more significant changes in the Islamic world than 1979. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran were epicenters as well as tributaries, and confluences of the history-making events of that year. Read More
Pakistan’s Reverse Revolution by Imtiaz Gul
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 marked the beginning of a painful journey for Pakistan that has culminated in a reverse socio-political revolution on two counts. First, instead of reaping rich dividends from a partnership with the United States that engineered the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, Pakistan today faces its gravest security challenge, as some of the forces with which it had partnered to defeat the Soviets and later used to force the Indians out of Kashmir are biting back. Second, post-revolutionary Iran’s expanding cultural presence and influence engendered a Saudi Salafist counter-reaction, thereby turning Pakistan into a battleground for a Saudi-Iranian proxy war which sowed the seeds of sectarian acrimony and violence between the country’s minority Shi‘a and majority Sunni populations. Read More
Pakistan: Reclaiming the Founding Moment by Suroosh Irfani
Rooted in a democratic struggle that ended British rule in the subcontinent, there was something remarkable about Pakistan’s emergence on August 14, 1947 as a sovereign Muslim state. This was as much reflected in the founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s address to Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly as in its national anthem and flag celebrating Pakistan’s founding moment. Jinnah’s speech set the direction for Pakistan as a modern democratic state, where religion was a personal matter that had “nothing to do with the business of the state,” and people could creatively rework a divisive past for a promising future. Read More
Reclaiming Pakistan's Pacifist Religious Creed by Ishtiaq Ahmad
If there is a cut-off point in the 62-year life of Pakistan, a country created in the name of Islam by secular Muslim leadership, it is 1979. For whatever traditionally pacifist sub-continental Islamic creed with a strong Persian influence that the country had retained since the partition of 1947 effectively ended that year. Since then, until the rise of al-Qa‘ida/Wahhabi-inspired Taliban extremism and terrorism in recent years, Pakistan has seen the consistent erosion of the broadly inclusive religious tradition it had inherited from the pre-independence Subcontinent — a heritage, in particular, of the centuries of Muslim rule under the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. Read More
Moving beyond “Islamic by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
Throughout the Cold War period, and even more so after it, American scholars have attempted to understand Muslim societies. Every decade has brought with it new paradigms, although the broad tendency has been towards a limiting, and thus problematic, cultural essentialism. Since the beginning of the “War on Terror,” this tendency unfortunately has been reinforced, thanks in large part to the Bush Administration’s words and actions; the atrocious term “Islamo-fascism” comes to mind. Read More
The Islamization of Pakistan’s Educational System: 1979-1989 by Nasim Ashraf
The decade of 1979-1989 can be viewed as the turning point for Pakistan’s educational system. It was the bedrock on which militant extremism was founded, and has left indelible imprints on the Pakistani nation. Religion was the justification given by General Zia ul-Haq to legitimize his dictatorship, as well as to consolidate his rule, which spanned more than 11 years. Coupled with geopolitical and sectarian struggles, Zia’s Islamization reforms completely transformed the educational system of Pakistan. Read More
Jamaat e Islami by Farhat Haq
Nineteen seventy-nine was a momentous year for the Jamaat-e Islami in Pakistan. Maulana Maududi, whose writings provided both the financial and intellectual foundation for the party, died after a long bout with kidney disease in Buffalo, New York. The same year, the arch-nemesis of the Jamaat, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, became a victim of what most Pakistanis considered a judicial murder at the hands of its erstwhile ally, General Zia ul-Haq. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution proved to be equally important in shaping Jamaat’s role in Pakistani politics and its participation in Sunni Islamist politics. After 1979 the Jamaat became less of what it always had viewed itself to be — the vanguard of Islamic Revolution — and more what its opponents had often accused it of being, an opportunistic player willing to make compromises with authoritarian leaders to gain political advantages. Read More
The Legacy of Bhutto and Zia’s Contending Visions and Security Policies by Lawrence Ziring
The war perpetrated by the Pakistani army in 1971 against its own Bengali population came to an end only through New Delhi’s intervention and the resulting loss of East Pakistan. The now-contiguous Pakistan that re-emerged in 1972, brought to power a new government dominated by civilians and led by the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and a new army commander, General Zia ul-Haq. This essay examines Bhutto’s and Zia’s contending visions for the newly reconstructed Pakistan, their differing approaches to the Kashmir dispute, and the long-lasting consequences of their actions. Read More
Imperialism, Extremism, and the Withering State by Imran Ali
The multiple crises that Pakistan faces in the post-Musharraf period appear to be of an amost existential nature. The resumption of a democratically elected civilian government following the elections of February 2008, and the subsequent removal of Musharraf in mid-2008, have failed to alleviate the sense of crisis, but rather have elevated it to even the level of chaos for certain Western analysts. Read More
Upheaval in West and South Asia: Public Opinion in Pakistan by Ijaz Shafi Gilani
The year 1979 was a time of great upheaval throughout Asia. Given the importance of the critical events of that year to Pakistan and the wider region, it is interesting to examine in retrospect how the Pakistani public at the time perceived them. This essay first sets the context for exploring these public attitudes. It then summarizes Pakistani opinion on major foreign policy and domestic issues, drawing upon the surveys carried out by the author under the auspices of the Pakistan Institute of Public Opinion, the Pakistani affiliate of the Gallup International Association during the year 1979. Read More
Pakistan’s Non-Proliferation Policy by Zulfqar Khan
Since 1979, Pakistan has emerged as a nuclear weapons state. A great deal of attention has focused recently on just three aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear program: the 1998 nuclear tests, the revelations surrounding the activities of A.Q. Khan, and the issue of the security of nuclear materials and facilities in the face of the country’s battle against extremists. As a result, the longevity and extensiveness not only of the nuclear program, but also of Pakistan’s non-proliferation efforts have been obscured. Read More
Thirty Years after 1979: Is Pakistan Changing Its Strategic Paradigm? by Jean-Luc Racine
While the partition of the British Raj was supposed to offer the Muslims of India, along with a new country, the solution to their problems, the first war between India and Pakistan started as early as 1947, under the guise of what later became one of the classic modes of operation of the State of Pakistan: “free” militias supposed to fight on their own to liberate Kashmir. After two more wars (in 1965 and 1971), Kashmir constantly was defined as “the core issue” to be resolved before the relationship between India and Pakistan could be normalized. Read More
The Pakistani Shi‘a by Hassan Abbas
The Shi‘a Muslims of Pakistan, constituting roughly 18-20% of the country’s 170 million inhabitants, are a vibrant and energetic minority. Shi‘a financial and political leaders, including Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah, played important roles in the Pakistan movement of the 1940s. Since then, they largely have remained part of the political mainstream. Traditionally, they have been well represented in the country’s civilian and military power structures, and in the media. Read More
Sindh’s Ethnic Predicament and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) by Moonis Ahmar
Sindh, the second most populous province after Punjab, is a complex ethnic mosaic. Inter-ethnic tensions in the province, and particularly in its capital city of Karachi, are rising, primarily due to the influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the conflict zones of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Malakand Division of Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) following the recent anti-terrorist military operation. The arrival of these IDPs in Sindh has triggered a widespread nationalist backlash, placing at risk the stability of the province and Pakistan itself. Read More
Baluchistan: A Hotbed for Insurgency by Syed Farooq Hasnat
Any uneasiness, disturbance, or uprising in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province is considered a national security concern with regional and international implications. This strategically important province borders Iran and Afghanistan and has a coastline of 750 kilometers, stretching from Hab (near Karachi) to the port of Gwadar (being built with Chinese assistance) along the Arabian Sea. The westernmost part of Baluchistan is not far from the Strait of Hormuz.1 The province is rich in minerals; the country’s largest natural gas reserve (in Sui) is located there. Baluchistan is also the homeland of the aggressive Bugti tribe. Read More
Sectarianism in Pakistan: A Profile of Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) by Tahir Kamran
There are a number of general studies of sectarianism in Pakistan,1 most of which link increased sectarianism with Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization, the Afghan War, the proliferation of Deobandi madrasas, and the Iranian Revolution. This essay shows how sectarian mobilization intersected with and competed with biraderi (patrilinear kinship networks) politics in the district of Jhang, a city in southeastern Punjab. It also situates sectarian militancy within the context of a rising urban commercial class that was locked out of political power by landowners who traditionally dominated district politics. Read More
Decades of Disaster: Islamization and the Women of Pakistan by Rubina Saigol
General Zia ul-Haq rode to power on the back of the Nizam-e Mustapha [System of the Prophet] movement led by religious parties against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government and its alleged rigging in the 1977 elections. Having seized power illegally on the pretext of establishing an Islamic system, General Zia harnessed a conservative and fundamentalist notion of Islam to provide legitimacy to his unconstitutional regime. He relied on the Deobandi Jamaat-e Islami’s interpretation of religion to impose his will on the country. Read More
Women’s Rights in Pakistan by Anita M. Weiss
Two momentous events occurred in Pakistan in 1979 that continue to have implications for women’s rights: the promulgation of Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization program (including the Hudood Ordinance)1 and the creation of the Women’s Division (precursor to the Ministry for Women’s Development) in response to international pressure during the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-85). These two actions provoked contradictory political enterprises, namely those which demand that the state incorporate more laws and institutions derived from or at least associated with Islam, and those which demand the rights of women along the lines of those advocated within the global community. Read More
Table of Contents
Maps
Bibliography
Middle East Journal's chronology: Pakistan in 1979