Daily Times

Progressive writers and intellectuals who questioned some of the assumptions about the new state were also silenced with censorship, court cases and imprisonment. Saadat Hassan Manto, whose writings depicted, in an uncanny manner, the creeping religiosity, mob vigilantism and the increasing power of the generals, was categorised as reactionary and obscene, and he repeatedly attended court proceedings on obscenity charges. Thus, the failings of the political class, constriction of intellectual space for liberal, progressive voices and the evangelical zeal of the religious political parties for the Islamisation of the country sowed the seeds of religious extremism and violence early on in Pakistan’s history.

The dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971, which signalled the dangers of ethnic factionalism, led to the development of an official narrative for using religion as a homogenising force to curb and control ethnic dissensions.

After the 1971 war, the elected parliamentarians of West Pakistan, now Pakistan, began holding discussions on the future constitution of the country. The ideological and legal thinking of the constitution-framers showed an inclination for an overt religious identity. In the 1956 and 1962 constitutions, the Islamic provisions had been set out in the unenforceable Directive Principles of State Policy. However, the 1973 constitution not only provided for Principles of Policy to enforce an Islamic way of life, Bhutto’s government gave constitutional legitimacy to Islamic provisions. For instance, a few weeks before his removal from power by General Ziaul Haq, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had imposed a ban on drinking alcohol, gambling, and declared Friday as a weekly holiday in lieu of Sunday. These measures were meant to whittle down the agitation of the opposition parties against the results of the 1977 elections, but in the words of Rafi Raza, one of the founding members of the Pakistan People’s Party, Bhutto gave up on his earlier views that the state and religion should be kept apart, only to find the new ground on which he chose to tread was firmly occupied by the religious parties.

Before the promulgation of Islamic measures, the socialist government of Bhutto, in order to bolster his Islamic credentials, had accepted the demand of the religious right on the issue of khatam-e-nabuwat, an 80-year-old theological dispute, by declaring Ahmadis as a non-Muslim minority. Declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims not only ghettoised the community but also exposed them to mob vigilantism and unnecessary state interference in their religious matters. Matthew Green, a Reuters correspondent, who has covered the politics of the country for many years, aptly notes: “Top-down discrimination against the Ahmadis set a disastrous precedent: populist campaigns to scapegoat religious minorities had been permanently incorporated into the Pakistani politicians’ toolkit.”

In 1977, General Ziaul Haq staged a military coup against Prime Minister Bhutto, imprisoned, and later hanged him in a state-orchestrated judicial trial. To seek legitimacy for his military rule, Zia began a full scale transformation of society on religious lines. First, his regime revised school and college curricula; Islamic Studies and Pakistan Studies were made compulsory subjects, and ideologically-driven course contents were incorporated in the curricula. A H Nayyar, a social scientist, observed in his 2002 report, “Subtle Subversion” — which reviewed school textbooks for hate-filled, ideological narrative — that school curricula fostered militancy and violence, including encouragement for jihad and shahadat (martyrdom), and inculcated prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially against women and religious minorities.

Second, as the martial law dictator was carrying out social re-engineering of society, he also began Islamising the constitution. The Objectives Resolution, passed by the constituent assembly in 1949, which had laid the basis for reordering the lives of Pakistanis in accordance with Islamic provisions, was made a substantive part of the constitution. Parliament enacted laws on Hudood and blasphemy, which strengthened the ideological zeal of religious reactionaries against women and religious minorities.

Third, the Zia regime established zakat and ushr institutions, and many governmental bodies were networked with international Islamic institutions, such as the Rabta-al-Islami, to invigorate the concept of the Muslim Ummah. However, in reality, these measures merely promoted the literalist version of Islam in Pakistan, as zakat was channellised to Deobandi and Ahle Hadith madrassas, denominations with a closer worldview to Wahabi Islam sponsored by Saudi Arabia, and also networked radicalised Pakistanis with their international counterparts. Khaled Ahmed writes in Sectarian War: Pakistan’s Sunni-Shia Violence and its links to the Middle East, “King Faisal gave Zia the seed-money to start the zakat system in Pakistan with the condition that a part of it go to the Wahabi party, called Ahle Hadith in Pakistan…He encouraged the clergy to open more seminaries to receive Rs 50,000 immediately from the zakat fund that he had started courtesy the Saudis…The sunni madrassas increased from 401 in 1960, when Pakistan remained secular in governance, to 1,745 in 1979, when ideology was emphasised.”

Finally, Zia increased the influence and clout of the ulema (religious scholars) in society through some other regressive steps. One, madrassah completion certificates were granted equivalence to degrees awarded by government-managed examination boards and universities. Consequently, graduates of madrassas were employed in public and private schools, colleges and universities as Islamic Studies and Arabic teachers. As a result, non-madrassa students learning Islamic studies have, over the succeeding decades, been exposed to the pedagogical skills, curricula and ideological mindset of madrassa graduates. Second, the military dictator also elevated the ulema as judges of the Federal Shariat Court and members of the Council of Islamic Ideology, which allowed the madrassa-educated religious class to increase their domination over the mainstream discourse about rights of women, minorities and Islamic laws. The hold of conservative, in fact, obscurantist theologians, continues unabated; it can be witnessed from the recent proceedings of the Council of Islamic Ideology, where its members refused to accept DNA as conclusive evidence in rape cases. It also shunned the demand of many sane elements of Pakistani society to modernise blasphemy laws to stem the flow of false allegations against minorities.

General Zia’s repressive and bigoted martial law regime had coincided with Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghan jihad. The state of Pakistan played a pivotal role in the Afghan jihad in the 1980s by becoming a conduit for funds and logistics, and also by arranging combat training camps for several Afghan groups. The social engineering conducted by Zia and the blowback from the Afghan wars nurtured and supported the jihadi infrastructure in Pakistan, which comprised of battle-hardened militants, combat training camps, dissemination of hate literature, implosion of weapons, and militarisation of religious seminaries.

(To be continued)

The writer is a research analyst based in Lahore