Awesome article !!!
There are well meaning people suggesting corrective action, but who is listening?
Contrarian
MOHAMMAD WASEEM
Origins and Growth Patterns of Islamic Organizations in Pakistan
http://www.apcss.org/Publications/Edited%20Volumes/ReligiousRadicalism/PagesfromReligiousRadicalismandSecurityinSouthAsiach2.pdf.
During the flurry of scholarly studies after September 11,
2001, researchers typically focused on investigation into Quranic
teachings, analysis of jihad and jihadis and interpretations of the
“Muslim mind” in general. This approach was sometimes put in a
larger context of the perceived clash of civilizations. The specific
Islamic civilization was characterized as a relatively emotive, undisci-
plined, medievalist and essentially irrational force inherently disrup-
tive of the modern civilization led by the West. Often, jihadi parties
and groups, topped by the erstwhile Taliban and its ally al-Qaeda
operating in the region surrounding Pakistan, provided the basic
material for outlining the emergence of a self-propelling motivating
force in the form of Islamic organizations. According to this
approach, this inner state of mind of Muslim terrorists inspired by
jihadist teachings lies at the heart of the problem.
Paul Brass distinguishes this so-called primordial approach from
the instrumentalist or circumstantialist approach, which considers
Islamic ideology as a social construct sponsored by the elite in pursuit
of political objectives.
While the primordial approach stresses the
innate mobilizing and inspiring strength of the appeal of Islamic val-
ues and norms, the circumstantialist approach focuses on state poli-
cies and organizational goals. The latter approach has been an obvi-
ous casualty in the heat of debate during the war against terror. It has
been generally discounted as irrelevant and inapplicable to the current
Muslim challenge to the world peace and stability. For example, in a
recent opinion poll in the United States, 82 percent of people believed
that terrorism was not related to public policy as pursued by
Washington. In most Muslim countries, including Pakistan, there are
estimated to be as many people or even more who would believe oth-
erwise. In other words, the Muslim self-statement is rooted in the cir-
cumstantialist approach to Islamic militancy. According to this, it is
the perceived unjust policies of the United States that should be held
responsible for the emergence of anti-American feelings throughout
the Muslim world. It is argued that the content and style of Islamic
organizational activities can be most fruitfully evaluated in a contex-
tual framework.
We propose to look at the issue of Islamic militancy in Pakistan
with reference to the postcolonial state, which cultivated Islam as a
supreme source of legitimacy. In addition, we shall discuss the emer-
gence of political Islam as an electoral force, a quarter of a century
after independence. Similarly, we want to analyze the political role of
sectarian organizations along with their madrassa-based educational
and training activities. Finally, we shall discuss the input of interna-
tional Islamic networks in the emergence of the militant thought and
practice.
State and Islam
IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POPULAR RESPONSE to Western policies or to
policies of pro-Western regimes in the Muslim world, there can be
fundamental differences in the potential of Islamic movements to
challenge, reshape or topple the ruling set-up. This depends largely on
the nature of a specific Muslim state. On the one hand, there are the
ex-British colonial societies including India, Sri Lanka, Kenya and
Ghana as well as Muslim states such as Malaysia, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Sudan, and Nigeria. Here, a kind of “tutelary democ-
racy” prevailed at the time of independence, comprising objectified
sources of authority in the sense of rule of law and rule of public
representatives on the one hand and the power base of traditional
elite operating in the modern state sector through electoral politics on
the other.
No populist revolution has upturned a government in any
of the Commonwealth countries in the postwar era, from either reli-
gious or class perspective.
On the other hand, there are non-ex-British colonies such as
Vietnam, Kampuchea, Angola, Mozambique and Muslim states of
Algeria and Indonesia. Here, the second component of the British
colonial legacy, i.e., the traditional elite acting as a broker between the
state and society, was missing. As the “assimilationist” policies of
colonial governments co-opted the local elite, the latter lost legitimacy
in the public eye and thus rendered initiative into the hands of radi-
cal urban intelligentsia. Following the pattern of their modern prede-
cessors who had fought against the French colonial rule, Islamic
groups in Algeria ran a populist election campaign and almost cap-
tured the state in the aborted 1993 elections.
At the other end, Muslim countries with a non-colonial past, includ-
ing Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, lacked the first
component of the colonial state, i.e., objectification of the sources of
authority in the form of constitutional rule. Here, the state depended
in the last resort on a “community of trust” represented by Pehlavi
dynasty, Kabul nobility, House of Saud, Takritis and Alavis, respec-
tively.
The process of modernization, postwar communication
explosion and horizontal mobility—especially urbanization—created
enormous pressures on these states. They lacked an internally differ-
entiated legal-institutional mechanism to keep the oppositional move-
ments decentralized as well as de-ideologized. Iran and Afghanistan
collapsed in the face of these movements, while Saudi Arabia faces
grim prospects of a populist challenge in the first decade of the
twenty-first century.
Pakistan is a constitutional state, with a colonial legacy deeply
rooted in the rule of law as well as electoral democracy, which was
disrupted by four stints of military rule. Paradoxically, the new state
was carved out of India as a Muslim state in the teeth of opposition
from some Islamic groups and parties led by Jamiat Ulema Hind
(JUH). However, certain lesser Islamic groups became part of the
Pakistan movement and later emerged as an in-built pressure group
within the post-independence state system. We can outline four major
currents of Islamic thinking and activity in British India that together
formed the Islamic tradition as part of the political culture of
Pakistan in its early phase: mass agitation such as the Khilafat move-
ment and Hijrat movement (1920–24); institutions of Islamic learning
such as at Deoband, Breilly and Lucknow, which provided a frame-
work for the Muslim self-statement about classical values and norms
of Islam and the contemporary response of Muslim societies to
Western domination; Islamic revivalist movements led by Wahabis at
one end and Ahmadis at the other, with organizations such as Tableeq
and Tanzim operating in the middle for restoring the glory of Islam;
and mulla activism in the Pakhtun tribal area adjoining Afghanistan,
which characterized the local rebellion against a remote, impersonal
and alien state in a narodnik spirit.
Islam in Pakistan has represented
all four trends represented by street agitation, anti-Western intellectual
discourse, religious scholarship of madrassas and the potential for a
xenophobic tribal rebellion in the North West Frontier Province
(NWFP), respectively. While the general public displayed these
strands of Islamic thought and action, the official Islam focused on
the “two-nation theory” and later Pakistan ideology as sources of
state legitimacy and profile of national destiny.
For a quarter of a century after independence, the modernist
Muslim elite kept the reigns of government firmly in its own hands.
The logic of Partition as fulfillment of the demand for a separate
Muslim homeland carved out of British India kept Islam at the center
of the nationalist discourse. Additionally, the migrant-led ruling
elite—including the first governor general Jinnah and the first prime
minister Liaqat, who came from Bombay and United Provinces (UP)
in India, respectively—opted for a model of centralist rule sometimes
described as the viceregal system.
Governments used Islamic ideol-ogy to counter the demand for provincial autonomy in pursuit of their agenda for national unity. Ulema and Islamists in general occupied a secondary role in public life. While operating from the madrassa and the pulpit of the mosque, they demanded rule of shari’a in Pakistan. Under successive parliamentary governments (1947–58) followed by General Ayub’s military—and later presidential—rule
(1958–69), the ruling elite adopted various strategies to control, cajole
or co-opt Islamist elements. The latter condemned the former for
being lackeys of the secular West.
Emergence of Political Islam
THE 1970 ELECTION WAS A TURNING POINT in the history of Islamist
groups and parties. General Yahya’s military government (1969–71)
faced the leftist challenge from Zulfiqar Ali (Z.A.) Bhutto in West
Pakistan and the Bengali nationalist challenge from Mujiburrehman in
East Pakistan. It decided to back Islamist elements in both wings to
stem the tide of anti-establishment feelings. The 1970 election is gen-
erally identified with the emergence of politics of the Left in West
Pakistan, not the least because it led to the formation of Bhutto’s
populist government in Islamabad.
6
However, the 1970 election also
ushered in an era of politics of Islam. Ulema moved out of their
mosques and madrassas, and managed to get eighteen out of three
hundred seats in the national assembly (NA). Surprisingly, the conser-
vative Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI)—based on the Deobandi sect—got
seven NA seats in the Pakhtun tribal belt of NWFP and Baluchistan.
It formed coalition governments in the two provinces and even got
chief ministership for itself in NWFP. The relatively less strict Jamiat
Ulema Pakistan (JUP)—based on the Brelvi sect—also got seven
seats, while the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI)—the essentialist party of univer-
sity graduates—won four seats.
While politics of the Left represented the popular wave under
Z.A. Bhutto, the opposition politics took a turn in the 1970s in favor
of Islamic parties. First, they moved from a mere pressure group to
becoming stakeholders in the political system itself, and sought to
Islamize the system from within. Second, they formed coalition gov-
ernments in the two provincial governments and thus got a share in
state power in terms of resource allocation to their constituents.
Third, in the event of a total defeat of the mainstream Pakistan
Muslim League (PML) factions in the 1970 elections, the mantle of
legitimacy for the role of opposition through the media and public
forums fell on the JI-JUI-JUP representatives in and outside legisla-
tures. They consistently criticized Bhutto for his un-Islamic (read
“socialist”) policies and introduced a comprehensive Islamic dis-
course for discussing the national agenda in public. Finally, they lent
a religious character to the anti-Bhutto movement after the contro-
versial elections of 1977. The relatively secular ethnic elite and lib-
eral mainstream politicians in the opposition’s Pakistan National
Alliance (PNA) felt obliged to accept the ideological leadership of
Islamic parties, not the least because the latter mobilized thousands
of madrassa students to bring demonstrations out in the street and
used mosques for propagating war against an “infidel” Bhutto.
Islamism almost forced itself as a source of legitimacy for the new
military leader General Zia (1977–88). The more the Pakistan People’s
Party (PPP) leader Bhutto displayed his potential to challenge Zia
from jail, the more Zia manipulated Islamic ideology for stabilizing
his regime. He issued the controversial Hadood Ordinances shortly
before hanging Bhutto ostensibly to pre-empt the much-feared agita-
tion from his party. Zia castigated democracy as an importation from
the West and instead upheld Islam as a source of legitimacy. The
Islamic parties JI, JUI and JUP joined Zia’s military government in an
all-out effort to stop Bhutto’s party from coming back to power in the
event of elections. Cooperation between army and Islamic parties that
started under Yahya came to fruition under Zia. The JI earned the
dubious title of Martial Law’s B team. Islam and democracy appeared
to be incompatible entities.
During the Zia period, Islamist groups and parties gained
immensely in terms of building an image of street power. The first
major agitation of Islamist elements in the 1953 anti-Ahmadiya
movement had brought down the Daultana government in Punjab
and subsequently the Nazimuddin government in the Center. In the
following decades, several governments took to their heals in the face
of a threat of Islamic agitation.
In 1962, Ayub accepted the demand from the Islamist group for
changing the name of the country from Republic of Pakistan to
Islamic Republic of Pakistan. In 1974, Z.A. Bhutto obliged Islamists
by declaring Ahmadis—his erstwhile allies in the 1970 elections—a
religious minority. In 1981, Zia conceded to the Shia activists by
exempting Shias from payment of Zakat, which was generally identi-
fied with Sunni jurisprudence. In 1995, Benazir Bhutto withdrew her
decision to audit the finances of madrassas, stop guerrilla training of
their students and reform their hate-based curricula in the face of a
nationwide strike. In 1998, Nawaz Sharif met the same fate when he
wanted to implement these reforms. In 2000, General Musahrraf
withdrew his proposal to reform the procedural aspects of the
Blasphemy Law in the face of a threat of street agitation from
Islamists. In this way Islamic parties demonstrated their street power
whenever their interests were threatened.
The war in Afghanistan, which was initiated, financed and spon-
sored by Islamabad and, indirectly but more effectively, by
Washington, took Islamic politics into its militant mode of opera-
tion. Afghan mujahideen and their counterparts from Pakistan
embraced the ideology of jihad against the Soviet Union. Islamic
parties, especially JI but also JUI with its base among the tribal
Pathan population in the vicinity of the war theater, accumulated
immense financial resources, gained access to the diplomatic world
and got hold of lethal weapons in large numbers. However, these
parties progressively lost electoral space. Their combined vote came
down from 21.5 percent in 1970 to 6.7 percent in 1993. In 1997, all
Islamic parties put together got two out of 207 National Assembly
seats. It was clear that their real strength and agenda had moved out-
side the narrow confines of electoral politics and even the territorial
limits of Pakistan.
The armed might of jihadist parties was rendered ineffective during
the U.S.-led war against terrorism in 2001–02. The loss of direction
for Islamists, combined with despondency, led to reworking of links
with ideological allies at home and abroad. As Pakistan moved to elec-
tions in October 2002, the anti-American sentiment provided a rally-
ing ground for Islamic parties.
Sectarian Dimension
ALMOST ALL ISLAMIC PARTIES and groups in Pakistan are based in spe-
cific sects and subsects. Only JI, along with its student body Islamic
Jamiat Talba (IJT), is supra-sectarian in approach and activity.
This party represented the Islamist conservative section of the urban mid-
dle class, educated in colleges and universities. JI has no constituency
in rural areas, few pockets of support among industrial workers and a
limited electoral strength. It has essentially operated as a pressure
group for Islamizing the state and implementing Sharia. It produced
Islamic literature in the Urdu language, which tried to grapple with
modern issues of politics and administration, education and health,
and manners and morals. JI aimed at Islamizing the state system of
Pakistan through electoral democracy, using the instrument of law. It
established its student wings in the institutions of higher learning
throughout the country. The military elite often used the JI’s endemic
presence in professions—e.g., Urdu press, as well as colleges and uni-
versities—to destabilize an incumbent government, especially a PPP
government. The party enjoyed its heyday under Zia who turned its
intellectual, organizational and ideological resources into a great asset
for his agenda to deflect democratic challenges at home and regulate
the support mechanism for the war in Afghanistan. Being educated in
colleges and universities, JI-oriented men and women have a strong
job orientation and indeed already have a considerable presence
within the power-wielding institutions of the state.
However, a sectarian party is the prototype of Islamic organization
today.
8
Pakistanis are predominantly Sunni and followers of the
Hanafi school of thought (as opposed to the relatively more strict
Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi schools popular in several Arab countries).
Sunni-Hanafis have their center of gravity in the Indo-Muslim civi-
lization, especially in the two seminaries at Breilly and Deoband in
northern India. Brelvis encourage saint-worship and shrine-worship,
indulge in superstitious practices and uphold the tradition of Sufi
orders established over centuries. They represent the majority in
Pakistan, with a large base in the peasant culture of Punjab. JUP, as
the leading Brelvi party, is typically non-militant. Brelvi ulema allow
separation between church and state inasmuch as their followers vote
for local influentials who may not be JUI nominees. JUP has gener-
ally kept a low profile, except during the 1977 anti-Bhutto movement.
It held an all-Pakistan Sunni conference in 2000. As an offshoot of
JUP in Karachi, the Sunni Tehrik represents a diehard approach to the
Sunni agenda.
While Brelvis represent oral orthodoxy cushioned by devotional
practices, Deobandis represent literate orthodoxy with a strict adher-
ence to the classical texts of Islam. This sect has produced several
organizations: JUH in the 1920s, Ahrars and Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm
e Nubawat (MTKN) in the 1940s and its leading party in Pakistan JUI,
which was sometimes divided into rival factions, such as Hazarvi ver-
sus Thanvi groups and Fazlurrehman versus Samiul Haq groups. As
JUI(s) embraced militant politics during the Zia period, the Sipah-i
Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) emerged as its sectarian outfit. The latter in
turn gave birth to a terrorist group Lashkar-i Jhangvi (LJ), which had
a clear mandate to kill Shias and destroy their infrastructure. As the
main anti-Shia groups for the last two decades, SSP and LJ were
widely held responsible for sectarian terrorism. Nawaz Sharif intro-
duced an Anti-Sectarian Bill in the national assembly in 1993 to con-
trol their activities. But the bill was allowed to lapse, ostensibly for the
fear of alienating the pro-Nawaz Sunni establishment. General
Musharraf finally banned LJ in 2001.
In Punjab, the appeal of Deobandis has been limited to some lower
middle class sections of the population. However, Pakhtuns of
NWFP and also Baluchistan emerged as natural followers of
Deobandism. The rigid adherence to Pakhtun tribal customs amply
correlated with textual rigidity and puritanical behavior preached by
Deoband. The popular Deobandi institution of Tablighi Jamat was
concerned with proselytization, correct ritual practice and a jihad of
soul through peaceful means rather than through militant action
against non-believers. On the other hand, the Pakhtun Deobandism,
and later Afghan Deobandism, flourished under war against commu-
nist infidels.
When the chief of the seminary at Deoband and his
entourage visited NWFP in 2001 to participate in the 150
th anniversary of their school, they were reportedly alienated by the deafening sound
of gunfire that welcomed them. Deobandism, along with tribalism
rooted in the Pakhtun segmentary lineage system, produced a jihadi
culture that soon spilled over to various areas of Punjab and Sindh. A
thriving gun industry in the tribal area and the U.S.-supplied arms in
the hands of Afghan mujahideen built the new jihadi infrastructure in
northwest Pakistan.
Another Sunni subsect called Wahabi, or Salafi, has recently gained
ground in major cities of Pakistan. Jamiat Ahle Hadith (JAH) remains
the major Wahabi party. It is widely known that Salafis represent and
safeguard Saudi Arabian interests in Pakistan. Being very strict about
Islamic teachings and disallowing liberal and modern interpretations of
the Quran and Sunna, this sect has a limited appeal beyond certain com-
mercial and professional middle class sections. After the 1991 Gulf War,
when most of Islamic parties and groups opposed the U.S.-led coalition
against Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia felt obliged to shift its patronage
away from parties such as JI and created a string of Salafi establishments
in Pakistan. In the backdrop of the continuing war in Afghanistan and
the emergence of jihadist struggle in Indian-held Kashmir, the new
Salafi outfit Dawat-ul-Irshad (DI) established guerrilla training camps
such as Ma’skar Tayaba in Kunnar province in Afghanistan and
Markaz Tayaba in Muridke near Lahore. Their guerrilla force, Lashkar
Tayaba, claimed several activities in Indian Kashmir. Salafis are ultra-
fundamentalists in their approach to theological matters.
10
The Shia-Sunni conflict has occupied the center stage in terms of
sectarian strife during the last two decades. The Shia, as a minority at
15 percent of the population, became overtly political in the late
1970s. First, Zia’s largely Sunni-based Islamization program shook the
Shia community out of complacency and caused widespread mobi-
lization in the pursuit of sectarian ends. Secondly, Khomeini’s revolu-
tion in Iran reinvigorated Shia minorities everywhere, especially in
Pakistan. Shias formed a new party, Tehrik Nifaz Fiqh-i Jafaria
(TNFJ), in a bid to safeguard their religious and economic interests,
and establish an Islamic state in Pakistan. The murder of the Shia rev-
olutionary leader Ariful Hussaini, allegedly at the hands of Sunnis,
was followed by revenge killings on both sides. SSP led a vehement
campaign for declaring Pakistan a Sunni state, and carried out numer-
ous acts of terrorism against Shias. Some younger Shias formed their
own militant organization, Sipah Muhammed (SM), which, however,
soon lost ground.
One can distinguish between the two generations of Islamists in
Pakistan’s history. The first-generation Islamists, who were generally
supra-sectarian, aimed at changing the law of the land, struggled to
enter the state through elections, operated through the printed word
and dabbled in conceptualizing the West, modernity, science, public
morality and statehood. The second-generation Islamists were sectar-
ian, localist and militant. They lacked intellectual tools for understand-
ing the dynamics of the state, the region, and the world at large. They
focused on simple polarities such as Islam and the West as good and
evil, respectively. They prepared themselves for war against the per-
ceived domination of Christians and Jews over the Muslim World.
The liberal intelligentsia often criticized the first generation for trying
to turn the wheel of history backwards. It condemned the second
generation for attempting to change the rules of game from ballot to
bullet and “externalizing” the public agenda in terms of a grand
polarity between Islam and the West in the world at large.
Institutional Setting
ISLAMIC SEMINARIES(MADRASSAS) have made news headlines ever
since mujahideen organized resistance against the Soviet incursion
into Afghanistan. The number of madrassas in Pakistan increased
from around 700 in both East and West wings to 868 in Punjab alone
in 1975 to 3,874 in the whole country in 1995. In 2002, more than
5,000 madrassas were supposed to be active on the ground.
In the 1980s, thousands of new madrassas were opened in the
backdrop of state incentives such as allocation of funds through the
Zakat Foundation. Many of these madrassas operated as base camps
for recruiting and training Afghan mujahideen. Typically, madrassas
have been socially embedded in sectarian communities. The five
major federations or associations of madrassas in charge of their
organizational and infrastructural requirements belong to Deobandi,
Brelvi, Salafi and Shia sects, and JI. Apart from a few centers of excel-
lence in Islamic teaching, these madrassas generally lack in quality.
Saudi Arabia and Iran allegedly provided financial and infrastructural
support to Sunni and Shia madrassas, respectively, and thus waged a
proxy war on the soil of Pakistan. Students of madrassas typically
belonged to families living at the edge of the society in terms of
poverty, suppression, economic breakdown and migration from rural
to urban areas. Students were socialized along the message of hostil-
ity toward others, including institutional and sectarian rivals and reli-
gious enemies, especially Hindus and Jews, the Westernized ruling
elite in Pakistan and the West. There are many respectable madrassas,
such as Jamia Ashrafia, Jamia Rashidia and Madrassa Khairul Ulem,
which impart classical knowledge of Islam. Indeed, madrassas gener-
ally remained confined to teaching religious classics and preaching
piety in their respective localities. However, a minority of these
madrassas was engaged in the jihadist activities, especially in the back-
drop of mujahideen’s war in Afghanistan, followed by Taliban’s rule
in Kabul from 1996 to 2001.
Benazir and Nawaz Sharif balked over the issue of regulating
madrassas for the fear of inviting the wrath of Islamist groups. The
Musharraf government issued a Madrassa Registration Ordinance in
June 2002 to control foreign funding, improve curricula and disallow
training in the use of arms.
An umbrella organization of madrassas,
Jamiat Ittehad Ulama (JIU), rejected the ordinance and opted for a
general strike. Its predecessor had been active against all official
attempts at regulation of madrassas from 1995 onward.
The thinking in official circles and in the educated middle class
about madrassas revolves around the idea of bringing them into the
mainstream education program. For that purpose, it has been sug-
gested to introduce computers, science education and other practical
arts in madrassas to enable them to produce students with the poten-
tial for productive participation in public life. However, a parallel
mode of thinking points out that such a policy will further
strengthen madrassa people in pursuit of their primitive goals
through militant activity with the help of modern organizational and
technological means. At the heart of the problem lies the inefficiency
and inability of the state to improve the regular school system and
link the educational and manpower policies to curb unemployment
and improve social services.
International Dimension
CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS
have internalized the techno-
logical dynamics of globalization. The speed and style as well as con-
tent of messages sent across the world have multiplied the impact and
scope of Islamic movement everywhere. We can outline three major
aspects of this phenomenon. First and foremost, it is the worldview
of Pakistani decision makers (as well as opinion makers) that provides
the conceptual framework for intellectual activity of local Muslims.
The articulate sections of the population in Pakistan have a worldview
characterized by an Indo-centric foreign policy, on-again, off-again
suspicion of the West, and a world of Islam perspective. The unre-
solved Kashmir Conflict has kept Indo-Pakistan relations at a boiling
point for most of the post-independence period. For eighteen years
after the emergence of Bangladesh, Kashmir remained on the back
burner of Pakistan’s foreign policy. As the last Soviet soldier left
Afghanistan, Kashmir emerged as the new area of Muslim struggle
against the non-Muslim rule in India. A decade of jihad, which
pushed Moscow out of Afghanistan, gave birth to a new doctrine of
armed struggle in pursuit of the goal of national self-determination.
The fact that it was a proxy war between the two superpowers and
that it was the U.S. commitment of financial, military and diplomatic
resources that decisively turned the tide in Afghanistan against the
Soviet Union did not represent the central point of understanding of
the mujahideen’s victory in Kabul, either in Afghanistan or in
Pakistan. A decade of mujahideen struggle in Kashmir started, which
occasionally brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
Large sections of Islamic groups and madrassa-trained students
emerged as the new generation of mujahideen committed to rid
Kashmir of Hindu rule. The new pattern of armed activity in Indian
Kashmir produced a variety of militant organizations. Some were
affiliated with Islamic parties in Pakistan, such as Hizbe-ul
Mujahideen with JI, and Lashkar Tauheed and Salafi Group for Call
and Combat with JAH. Others had Arab, Central Asian and Afghan
connections, such as Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, al-Jihad based in
Egypt, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, al-Qaeda Islamic Army,
Taliban Islamic Movement and Harkat-i-Islami. Similarly, al-Badr,
Jamiat al-Mujahideen, Harkatul Ansar (renamed Harkatul
Mujahideen) and Jaish-e-Muhammed (renamed al-Furqan) operated
in Indian Kashmir but cultivated close relations in Pakistan and other
Muslim countries. Various new groups have emerged in the triangle of
crisis comprising Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan, including al-
Usman, al-Omar and al-Saiqa. Others were charity organizations such
as Wafa Humanitarian Organization and al-Rashid Trust, as well as
the controversial Ummat Tameer Nau, led by an ex-chief of Atomic
Energy Commission of Pakistan. One can also mention smaller out-
fits such as Karwan-i-Khalid, Zarb-Momin and Zarb-Islami. These
organizations operated in the three countries of India, Pakistan and
Afghanistan in pursuit of shared foreign policy and strategic objec-
tives, which were ideologically embedded in the larger civilizational
goals.
Confusion, conflict and suspicion of the West in Pakistan draw on
the colonial past, the historical legacy of the Crusades and, more
recently, the Arab-Israel conflict. All Muslims, Arab and non-Arab,
liberal and conservative, educated and non-educated, share the agony
of humiliation in the form of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian terri-
tories. Public opinion in Pakistan, as elsewhere in Muslim countries,
holds the West, especially the United States, responsible for this grave
aggression against a classical Muslim land. Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza has done more damage to relations of Islam
with the West than has any other issue during the last three and a half
decades. Other Muslim causes such as Kashmir, Chechynia, Bosnia
and Kosovo belonged to communities that were once part of Muslim
empires but became politically unprotected after the frontiers of
Islam shrank over the centuries. The dichotomous model of the
world, along the lines of Islam and the West, has taken root in Muslim
societies everywhere, even as their governing elite continue to look
toward the West for financial and diplomatic support as well as
national security. This attitude has crystallized into an Islam perspec-
tive whereby Muslims operate in a mini world of their own and seek
to establish institutional networks to unite this world against the wider
world presided by the West.
Secondly, transnational Islamic networking is a major development
in the non-state sector in recent decades. One can outline several
nodal points of contact between Muslim activists throughout the
world. First, Islamic militant groups from Muslim societies bear
grievances against the West for causing damage to their territorial
interests such as in Palestine. Second, historical Muslim minorities
struggle to safeguard their cultural, religious, economic and political
interests against policies of their respective majority-based states
such as Russia, India and China. Third, Muslim expatriates in
Western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom,
France and Germany feel marginalized in terms of employment, cul-
tural autonomy and racial harmony. For example, the second-gener-
ation Pakistanis in Britain experienced multiple setbacks, including
loss of identity, loss of culture, and loss of status. Against odds of
all kinds, Islamic identity operates as irreducible minima for Muslim
migrants in the West, who suffer gross alienation from their respec-
tive state systems and mainstream educational, cultural and media
systems.
The response of Muslims in all these situations is the recourse to
the cause of Muslim unity, solidarity and fraternity. There is a rework-
ing of the Muslim project in process, which was initially started by the
Muslim Brotherhood in the first half of the twentieth century.
Islamic militants in Pakistan, as well as among British Pakistanis and
across the border in Indian Kashmir, tend to see their counterparts in
Hezbollah of Lebanon, Islamic Jehad of Egypt and Hamas of
Palestine. While terrorism in the West is perceived as disruption of a
just society by unjust means, Islamic militants understand terrorism as
a form of mandatory war against the unjust global society presided by
the United States.
Pakistani activist groups and individuals have frequently interacted
with their counterparts in Western societies as well as in other
Muslim communities. In comparison, there is far less activity by way
of transnational networking among civil society activists from uni-
versities and the media, as well as lawyers, engineers, doctors, artists,
writers and human rights activists. While globalization is progressing
rapidly through the communications explosion, the integrative and
assimilative activities in the cultural, educational and political fields
have failed to keep pace. The United States is widely criticized by the
liberal intelligentsia in Pakistan, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, for
hoisting a military dictator on top of the nation and for paying lip
service to the cause of democracy.
Thirdly, the self-statement of the West in terms of the perceived
clash of civilizations has not helped matters. The Western input in
the emergence and activation of the dichotomous worldview among
Muslims can be understood in terms of a continuing preoccupation
with the “otherness” of Islam. For example, terrorism is conceived
as a state of (Muslim) mind rather than as an issue related to U.S.
public policy. Similarly, there is rampant cynicism in Muslim coun-
tries rooted in the injustice syndrome, drawing heavily on unre-
solved conflicts such as Palestine and Kashmir. Policies, or indeed
non-policies, about the issue of settlement of millions of
Palestinian and Afghan refugees, among others, have turned their
temporary settlements into breeding houses of hatred and frustra-
tion. Similarly, the policy of rendering Muslim countries as rogue
states and thus pushing them to exit from the world system has
mobilized a large number of people in Muslim countries belonging
to South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, as
well as historical Muslim minorities and the Muslim expatriate com-
munity in the West.
Over the centuries, Pakistanis have lacked a continuous identity that
would have served as a wellspring of territorial nationalism in the
country. They are by definition pan-Islamic in their vision. The
process of moving away from Hindu-dominated Indian civilization,
which started in 1947 and acquired a new impetus in 1971 after the
emergence of Bangladesh, has got Pakistan deeply involved in the
destiny of the Islamic nations and groups the world over. Islamic
organizations in Pakistan thrive on their transnational vision and net-
works operating within a dichotomous framework of world politics.
Conclusion
OUR OBSERVATIONS POINT
to the complex origins and patterns of
growth of Islamic organizations in Pakistan. We have discussed the
way Islamic ideology functioned as the supreme source of legitimacy
for the state, and defined the parameters of the political context that
eventually laid down the turf for politics of identity. The Islamic move-
ment changed its character from a pressure group for establishing the
rule of shari’a in the first quarter of a century after independence, to
an electoral and then a militant force in the second quarter. The
regional input in the form of the war in Afghanistan combined with
Zia’s vehement pursuit of the Islamization program in the 1980s to
produce a dynamic pan-Islamic agenda and a vast Islamic network at
home and abroad based on sectarian parties and madrassas.
The army-dominated state apparatus in Pakistan has militated
against providing social, cultural, economic and political space to the
civil society in general and public representatives in particular. On the
other hand, Islamic parties and groups enjoyed a relatively free hand
to operate in the educational, cultural and, increasingly, political fields.
Even more significantly, the state elite sought to provide a role for
Islamist groups against various political forces identified with the
Left, ethnolinguistic communities, provincial autonomy activists and
the liberal intelligentsia. The involvement of Islamic militants in the
wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir contributed to privatization of for-
eign policy and militarization of Islamic activists. The international
Islamic networks finally provided a global agenda for the movement
in terms of endemic anti-Americanism. The unresolved conflicts
around the world involving Muslim communities, especially in
Palestine, sharpened the boundaries of the conflict. We can conclude
by observing that state policies, regional instability and non-resolution
of conflicts involving Muslims in the region and in the world at large
are the leading determinants of the nature and direction of Islamic
organizations in Pakistan.
1. See Paul Brass, “Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among
the Muslims of South Asia,” in D. D. Taylor and Malcolm Yapp, eds., Political Identity
in South Asia (Surrey, 1979), 47–48.
2. Myron Weiner, “Empirical Democratic Theory,” in Myron Weiner and Ergun
Ozbudun, eds., Competitive Elections in Developing Countries (Duke University Press,
1987), 4–5.
3. Charles Tripp, “Islam and the State in the Middle East” (paper presented at the
Conference on Sectarianism and the Secular State, ICES, Colombo, 1992), 3.
4. D. Reetz, “Muslim Concepts of Local Power and Resistance: Islamic Militants in
the Indian Frontier Province before Independence” (paper presented at the
Fourteenth European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Copenhagen,
21–24 August 1996), 2.
5. See K. B. Sayeed, The Political System in Pakistan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).
6. For example, see S. J. Burki and Craig Baxter, “Socioeconomic Indicators of the
People’s Party Vote in the Punjab: A Study at the Tehsil Level,” in W. H. Wriggins,
ed., Pakistan in Transition (Islamabad: 1975), 64–67.
7. For details, see Vali R. Nasr, The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution: The Jamat Islami of
Pakistan (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995).
8. Mohammad Waseem, “Sectarian Conflict in Pakistan,” in K. M. de Silva, ed.,
Conflict and Violence in South Asia (Kandy, 2000), 71–74.
9. Barbara Metcalf, “Piety, Persuasion and Politics: Deoband’s Model of Islamic
Activism” (working paper), 5.
10. See Guilain Denoeux, “The Forgotten Swamp: Navigating Political Islam,”
Middle East Policy 9, no. 2 (June 2002).
12. Dawn (19 June 2002).
13. See Yunas Samad, “The Plural Guises of Multiculturalism: Conceptualizing a
Fragmented Paradigm,” in Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner, eds., The Politics of
Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community (London: Zed Books,
1997).
14. Laden Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, “Terror, Islam and Democracy,”
Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (April 2002).
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