Mphil 2012 london_met__thesis_v3fb

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SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil

Accommodation, Competition and Conflict:

Sectarian Identity in Pakistan,1977- 2002 .

Introduction

Outline

Since the 2003 American led military intervention in Iraq, the ongoing sectarian

bloodshed between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims has featured regularly in the

media. Prior to 2003, for more than twenty years, Pakistan not Iraq was the global

epicentre for violent internal conflict between Islam’s two major sects. The time frame

for this study starts with a military takeover in 1977 that meant for the first time in its

history, Pakistan had a leadership with a religious leaning and it ends with several

opposing religious parties representing various sects and sub-sects forming a grand

alliance that achieved a degree of electoral success in 2002. In looking at the three

different aspects of sectarian relations in Pakistan:-accommodation, competition and

conflict during the period 1977 to 2002, this dissertation attempts to deal with several

important questions. Why has sectarian identity become so significant, particularly in

certain regions of Pakistan? Another important issue is the increasing significance of

sectarianism in the political arena. For which there is a need to assess the influence

of sectarianism in neighbouring states, as well as government policy, which have

contributed in creating sharper forms of sectarian identity in Pakistan. The

dissertation intends to achieve the following aims. Firstly, enlarge our understanding

of the nature of sectarian identity. Secondary, explain the dynamics of sectarian

conflict. Finally, assess the significance of sectarian identity in a religiously defined

state. Before embarking on this task, there is a need to situate this study within a

broader context.

Most dissertations on community conflicts in South Asia are concerned with conflicts

between members of different religious traditions. For instance, there exists a

massive body of literature on the various inter-communal conflicts between Hindus

and Muslims in India, and Sinhalese Buddhists and Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Normally such conflicts are asymmetrical as usually there features a majority-

minority dimension. The rise of Shia-Sunni violence in Pakistan involving militants

from the majoritarian Sunnis against militants from the Shia minority is one of the

prime examples of conflict within a single religious tradition or between sects, which

for the purposes of this particular research is sectarianism. Sectarianism viewed as a

variant of fundamentalism, or vice-versa, but this manifestation of religious

extremism becomes more complicated. Many but not all the fundamentalists are

also sectarian. Before embarking further along this path, there is a need to explain

fundamentalism. The term fundamentalism is often attached to militant groups

associated with rigid adherence to religious doctrines, ritual practices and group

hierarchy in which charismatic leaders often dominate.

Fundamentalists sometimes become politically significant when they seek to impose

their radical demands on the rest of society despite often being a minority within their

particular religious tradition. Fundamentalists claim that their interpretation of religion

is the only “pure” and “true” interpretation, an undiluted and original version. In

addition, fundamentalists claim monopoly on defining what is right and what is

wrong, as well as usually refusing to recognise alternative viewpoints. However,

fundamentalism is not just a throwback to the ancient or medieval eras as

fundamentalism is a selective reinterpretation of the past (Puri 2004:194-195). In

reality, fundamentalism is a complex mix of certain aspects of modernity and

tradition, which is regarded as a reaction against other aspects especially the liberal

aspects of modernity and tradition.

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Inadequate significance has been attached to sectarian conflict in Pakistan.

Therefore, there is a need for a major reappraisal and scrutiny of the complexities in

the internal and external crises facing state and society in Pakistan as to avoid

oversimplification. Therefore, this dissertation has focused on the formation,

development, political consequences and the efforts for possible reconciliation to

conflict between rival Muslim sects and sub-sects in Pakistan.

Pakistan like many countries has experienced a religious resurgence that defies the

secularization thesis. The Secularization thesis which itself was once a dogma for

social scientists especially sociologists of religion states that the modernization of

society with increasing industrialisation, urbanization, education and upward social

mobility will result in religion being confined to the private sphere, excluded from the

public arena (Davie 2007:3-4).

Sectarian militancy is one aspect of this religious revival. One Muslim sect is different

from another in terms of certain rituals or beliefs, which may appear to some as

being of minor importance, but to some militants or neo-fundamentalists who have a

closed attitude towards these differences it is constructed as an argument of

orthodoxy against heterodoxy or heresy. Sunni Islam is the assumed Islamic

`Orthodoxy’ (Karolewski 2008:436).

It is due to the influence of studies of Christian theology on Islamic studies that the

dichotomy of Orthodoxy and heterodoxy were produced in order to try to define what

should be the norm and what is considered as a deviation from it. One of the major

concerns of Muslim scholars has been the comparison of Imami Shia and Sunni

sects. The other major topic of interest being numerically smaller non-Imami Shia

sects who differ from both Sunni and Imami Shia Islam as far as importance

attached to formal rituals. Generally and opposing the viewpoints of Sunni scholars

these groups usually also define themselves as Muslims and contest the assertion of

Sunni Islam as the sole `righteous’ interpretation (Karolewski 2008:435).

In extreme cases there is a process of neo-fundamentalists dichotomizing

themselves as the only true believers and denying their Muslim opponents the status

of being fellow Muslims ; previously they were regarded as deviated Muslims but still

contained within the Islamic fold. The term neo-fundamentalist is used here as they

are not adherents of traditional Islam which allows more acceptance or tolerance of

religious pluralism and thus is not absolutist or exclusive. The terms of categorization

of Islam discussed here and the debates associated with them will be explained in

more depth in the forthcoming chapters.

These neo-fundamentalists may be better described as sectarian neo-

fundamentalists as opposed to some Islamists such as the Jammat-e-Islami (Islamic

Society) or JI who since the late 1970s began to de-emphasize internal differences

among Muslims in their long-term quest for the establishment of a theocracy or the

Islamisation of state rather than society which they see as their pivotal goal

regardless of strict adherence to a particular sectarian viewpoint. So the JI’s

membership which is now open to almost all Muslim sects is thus accommodative

being almost unique among Pakistani religious parties who are strongly identified

with a single sect or in the case of Sunni parties a particular sub-sect. Being an

Islamist party, JI is relatively more open to express its views in the language of

modernity and Islamizing concepts from modernity while the other major strand in

radical Islam, the neo-fundamentalists almost totally reject such an approach (Roy

2012:245-6).

Neo-fundamentalists also tend to strongly oppose any efforts towards Islamic

ecumenism. The JI’s unsuccessful attempts in 1990s to bring rapprochement

between warring sectarian militias by forming the Milli Yikjahati (national unity)

Council shows that radical Islam itself has a multitude of ideological orientations

some of which like traditional Islam share a degree of flexibility in accepting plurality

in society. Thus Islamic radicals are not always synonymous with sectarianism or

intolerance.

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In Pakistan, the Sunnis, who are as in most Muslim countries, the majority sect, and

the Shia, a much smaller but a relatively powerful minority are locked in a bitter

struggle with militants from both sects violently arguing over several major and minor

issues. Shia militants fearing that their community will be further marginalized while

their Sunni rivals pursue the utopian ideal that a Islamic state has to be a

homogeneous entity. The Shias have since the late 1970s been experiencing

increasing levels of hostility from Sunni sectarian militants which are also in conflict

with alternative or less literal interpretations such as the modernist and Sufi

tendencies within the broader category of Sunni Islam.

There is in Pakistan a simultaneous intra-Sunni conflict which is of smaller

magnitude which both impacts and is influenced by Shia-Sunni sectarianism. So the

Shia-Sunni dichotomy is not the only sectarian fault line in Pakistan. The sheer

variety of Muslim sects and especially sub-sects in Pakistan seems quite

overwhelming and this thesis can’t explore all of them. If religion was the only issue

in sectarianism that Ismaili Shias would be the prime target for Sunni sectarian

militias as Ismaili are much more deviated from what is regarded as the Sunni norm

than mainstream Imami Shias. Faisal Devji (2005:58) argues that it is the Imami

Shias who are targeted because of their closeness to Sunni Islam and also that is

they are a competitor to Sunni Islam. In this thesis, Shia usually always refers to

Imami Shia.

There is some continuity in sectarian relations between Shias and Sunnis which

span historical and geographical dimensions as Pakistan is not the only country

experiencing intra-Muslim conflicts. Afghanistan and Iran have longer histories of

sectarianism than Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is the most sectarian Muslim country which

allegedly sponsors sectarianism in many other countries including Pakistan (Nasr

2006:23). In Syria, Turkey and Yemen there are `Shia’ minority sects termed as

Alawis, Alevis and Zaidis respectively who sometimes come into violent conflict with

Sunnis.

This endeavour will help highlight shared characteristics that Pakistan has with some

other multi-sect Muslim countries as well as the peculiarities of sectarianism in

Pakistan. In addition, similar comparisons are made with Hindu majority India, where

despite the dominance of the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict, there is conflict

between Shias and Sunnis in certain regions of India, the Shias believing that they

are under siege as they are a minority within a minority as Sunnis greatly outnumber

them. The conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs and the internal

social divisions of caste among Hindus provide more scope for comparisons as

these conflicts have all been studied in the South Asian context.

Conflict between Shias and Sunnis has a long history, but why has the level and

spread of violent sectarian activity increased so sharply in the last quarter century

that it now dominates the political agenda in some regions of Pakistan? With regard

to Pakistan’s historical time line, the seriousness of sectarian incidents has

intensified. The general trend was towards more violence, with 1997 being the peak

year of violence. Why did sectarian violence peak at the fifth anniversary of

Pakistan’s establishment? This is by no means an easy question to answer as there

are many contradictions inherent in Pakistan’s politics and history. However, here in

this thesis, an attempt has been made to analyse the various causes for sectarian

polarization and to study whether some of these causes interact in producing an

unstable situation which then inspires the growth of violent sectarian movements.

The sectarian hysteria generated during campaigns directed at other Muslim sects is

seen as a failure of modernist Islam which inspired Pakistan’s founding fathers and

the decline of the appeal of traditional Islam in the consciousness of the expanding

lower middle classes. The petty bourgeoisie which is the social class most

associated with religiosity have many grievances against the privileged elites who

deny them a major role in the political decision making process and so segments of

the lower middle class who also aspire to more prosperity provide the bulk of the

constituency which is receptive to radical Islam as an egalitarian ideology that can

challenge the authoritarianism of existing elites but is also itself totalitarian in nature

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(Hussain 2005:188). The irony here is that these elites have successfully used these

religious militants in combating challenges from liberal and leftwing ideologies.

The division between the Shias and the Sunnis which may be seen as a form of an

internal clash of civilizations is rooted in the intense debates and doctrinal

controversies over the crisis of legitimate succession to the Muslim community’s

leadership that came into question following the death of the holy Prophet

Muhammad. Thus it can be said that the religious divide between Shias and Sunnis

has its origins in a leadership struggle which implies that politics take precedence

over religion in reality. To the Shia, most of the Companions of the Prophet (Sahaba)

after the Prophet’s death wanted to deny Hazrat Ali (his son-in-law), and after him

his descendants, the Shia imams, of their religious and political right to the

leadership of the Muslim community. According to the Shias (partisans of Ali), these

Sahaba, and their successors, were acting against the wishes of the Prophet and

used Islam for enhancing their own political motives. However, the Sunnis revere the

Sahaba, and some Sunnis also revere the Shia imams as well, but the Khulafa’ al-

Rashidun, the four `pious successors’ of the Prophet (of whom Ali was to eventually

become the last), are revered as second in status only to the Prophet in the Sunni

religious hierarchy. The hostile attitude of the Shias towards the Sahaba (especially

the first three caliphs) expressed in their ritual cursing (tabarra) of the Sahaba is the

major religious divide which separates the Shias from the Sunnis.

Islam as in case of other religions is much more than just a set of beliefs or shared

rituals but also includes religious authority which also defines a body of members

within a religious boundary, so both Sunnis and Shias find strength in their specific

sectarian identity. Some knowledge of Islamic history and theology is therefore

essential, but here in dealing with a more contemporary scene, in the context of

Pakistan, a nation-state defined in religious terms, an in-depth exploration of

Pakistan’s socio-economic and geopolitical environment is required to understand if

it has significance to the consolidation of sectarianism as an important political

discourse. There are few places in the world where religious and political identities

are so closely entangled as in Pakistan.

Prior to Pakistan’s independence in 1947, sectarian relations between the Shia and

Sunni sects was relatively free from actual violence in most of the Muslim majority

regions that came together to form the new country (Behuria 2004:158). This was

probably due to the strong influence of Muslim mystical saints (Sufi Pirs) having an

almost unchallenged hold of the rural masses that formed the vast bulk of the

region’s population (Zahab 2002:115).The emphasis on community conflict and

competition during the British Raj period was largely centred on the binary divide

between Muslims and non-Muslims (Hindus and Sikhs). However, Ashutosh

Varshney ( 2003:172) writes that in some parts of the former United Provinces of

British India, especially in the Awadh region where Shia elites had dominated the far

more numerous Sunnis and Hindus prior to the British Raj, sectarianism amongst the

minority Muslim population eclipsed the more documented Hindu-Muslim tensions.

The United Provinces, now the modern Indian provinces of Uttar Pradesh and

Uttarankhand, was the major centre for various community conflicts (Hindu-Muslim,

Shia-Sunni, higher caste Hindu-lower caste Hindu) in British India. The Muslim

League which had its roots in safeguarding the rights of Muslims in British India, was

a party dominated by upper class Muslim elites both Shia and Sunni from this region.

After Partition, many urban middle class and lower middle class Urdu speaking

Muslims both Shia and Sunni, from India also came to Pakistan. Here in this new

nation-state, owing to their relatively better education they were over-represented in

certain sectors of the economy. The indigenous population resented their dominance

and labelled them as being Muhajirs (migrants).

This unkind description made this particular grouping of Muslims feel rather uneasy

in their new homeland and their initial response was to strongly emphasis their

identity as religious Muslims by forming various Islamist organisations. So Muhajirs

were over-represented in religious organisations such as the JI which demanded that

Pakistan be turned into a religious state which would be subject to the full application

of the Islamic sacred law (Shariah) as the supreme law. This relationship of Islam

with Pakistani nationalism, can be considered as a quest for unitary, one God, one

language (Urdu), one country, one religion which also implicitly meant just one sect.

Tolerance of diversity regarded as compromising or threatening unitary. Such

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extremists were strongly opposed to the dominant `secular’ nationalist parties led by

indigenous rural landed elites, some of whom had strong links to Sufis (Choudhary

2010:11).

According to JI doctrines, the aim of an Islamic state is to remove those evils which

are not eradicated through the efforts of Islamist organisations alone, the coercive

power of the state apparatus has to fulfil this purpose. Liberal democracy is not

regarded as being a part of an Islamic State (Roy 2011:62).

The JI’s ideas regarding the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan were

detrimental to its western-educated ruling elites, as they did not envisage an Islamic

state. Pakistan was created according to modernist Muslim ideals to safeguard the

Muslim minority of British India from the real or perceived threat of the Hindu majority

who were relatively more advanced in the important modern sectors of business and

education. This concept of minority protection also meant by extension that all

religious minorities both Muslim and non-Muslim living in Pakistan should be free

from discrimination from the state apparatus otherwise the Pakistani state itself

would be classified as a hypocritical state (Badler 2003:267- 278).

The imposition of an Islamic order in Pakistan would bring out to the open more

problems regarding inter-community relations than it would probably intend to solve.

Which version of the Islamic law is going to be applied, the Muslims were

themselves going to be divided further by this theme? Would the imposing of Islamic

law in Pakistan encourage more discrimination towards the Muslim minority sects

and non-Muslim minorities? Mawdudi was not discouraged by the complexity of the

implementation of Sharia law would bring as all he said in response to his modernist

critics was that Pakistan is in a state of unbelief and so is acting against the wishes

of God.

In this period, the Muhajirs outwardly neglected their own racial and regional origins.

This increased emphasis on Muslim identity and practice made some sense in an

overwhelming Muslim majority state, as it could be a tool to help further the cause of

Muslim brotherhood by discouraging the threat of ethnic regionalism. There was

however a considerable drawback to this approach, as sectarian identity is a part of

and interacts with the wider religious identity. The broader identity of just being a

Muslim could not be fully separated from the concern placed on which sect of Islam

an individual or a family belongs to, regardless of their actual role in public life.

Also during this period, due the impact of Muhajirs especially those from the lower

middle classes, who had carried with them from India, a strong sense of sectarian

identity. The much larger indigenous population of Pakistan, itself already heavily

divided on various racial, tribal and linguistic lines, was being exposed to religious

sectarianism to a far greater extent than it was during the British Raj. Tariq Ali ( 200

2:177) asserts that since almost all the Hindus and Sikhs have been expelled from

the territories that have come to form what is now Pakistan, so denying the Sunni

Muslim neo-fundamentalists of an easily defined non-Muslim target, they have then

focussed their hatred towards the new targets of the Ahmedis and Shias, by

emphasising that only Sunnis are Muslims and denying the rights of other sects to

claim this status so making the definition of Muslim identity a highly contested

identity.

Some of these Sunni neo-fundamentalists have formed sectarian parties which

consider themselves as the custodians of a redefined authenticity which denies the

legitimacy of their secular and religious opponents including even other Sunni

religious parties such as the Islamist JI. The sectarian parties justify their rigid

approach to religion, as they look at differences as a form of dissent ( fitna) towards

the solidarity of believers. This is rather complex as the unity of Muslims is itself a

contested term.

Does this viewpoint have its origin in the segment of society that is politically

frustrated so finds sectarian organisations an appealing outlet? Mention of class

conflicts which may be expressing themselves in more distinct ideological terms is

required if sectarianism is masking underlying class tensions. Most of the Muslim

clergy (ulema) belong to the lower middle classes, some of them are deeply rooted

in sectarianism, regard themselves as the religious representatives of the people, so

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they demand the intrusion of their particular interpretations of Islam into the public

sphere. So there is an on-going tussle between the sacred and the secular as also

there are variances in the interpretations of Islam preferred by sections of the

religious scholars, modernist elites and the populace.

So sectarian identities were now added with a new greater emphasis to the vast

array of existing identities, making the relationship between different sections of

Pakistani society more complex than ever before. Yet the first thirty years of

Pakistan’s existence (1947-1977) were going to be considered a relatively mild

period for Shia-Sunni relations compared with what was going to happen in the

aftermath of the military takeover of July 1977, when a popular supposedly Shia

prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Nasr 2006:88-90) was overthrown by the

staunchly Sunni chief of army staff that Bhutto himself had appointed, General

Muhammad Zia ul Haq (1977-1988). However the power struggle between the

Sunni Zia and the Shia Bhutto should not be portrayed in simple sectarian terms

being that of a Shia against a Sunni. During the peak of Bhutto’s power in the early

1970s, his left-wing politics alarmed some of the Shia business and religious elites

who entered into alliance with the anti-Bhutto camp which contained many Sunnis of

similar class interests (Ahmed 2009:109). However Zia preferred senior military

appointments to be filled with strict Sunni officers who shared his lower middle class

background and religious outlook. Zia also encouraged divisive politics based on

sect, region and clan as he had feared political parties especially the PPP which had

cross-community support, could challenge his authority. Zia had created what

Mughees Ahmed ( 2009:110) the localization of politics which shifted the political

focus away from national politics which helped the spread of sectarianism.

Pakistan is not usually associated with Shi’ism as in the case of Iran and Iraq. Iran is

the country most closely associated with Shi’ism as Shias are in overwhelming

majority and Iranian nationalism and Shi’ism are powerfully intertwined. Pakistan

has probably the world’s second largest Shia population after Iran (Shaikh 2011:

243). The exact percentage of the Pakistani population in Muslim sectarian terms is

difficult to establish as there are no official figures published. The government only

acknowledges that there exists a Shia minority and also that there are religious

differences which are present among the Sunni majority. The only government

statistics available regarding religious affiliation is based on the binary divide

between Muslims and non-Muslims which shows the later category includes as little

as 3.5% of the entire population of Pakistan.

The major non-Muslim communities in Pakistan are Christians, Hindus and the

Ahmadis who have been entered against their adamant claims, into the non-Muslim

category since Bhutto’s legislative reforms of 1974. The Ahmadis especially the

Qadiani majority sub-sect among them believe that the Prophet Muhammad was not

the last the prophet while the minority Lahore sub-sect of Ahmadis regards the

founder of the Ahmadi movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad not as a prophet but as a

great religious reformer. This belief on continued prophet-hood has periodically

brought Ahmadis into intense conflict with both Sunnis and Shias, despite Ahmadis

themselves strictly observing the major rituals of Sunni Islam from which they had

separated during the nineteenth century. There exists an almost universal consensus

among both Sunnis and Shias that the Ahmadis are outside the fold of Islam.

Some sectarian Sunnis had with the help of their Shia rivals successfully urged

Bhutto to change the status of the Ahmadi community. These militant Sunnis had

temporarily set aside their long standing disputes with their counterparts in the Shia

community, so the Ahmadi community was targeted by what appeared to be a united

front of Shia and Sunni ulema. Shias were reluctantly accommodated by Sunnis

during the anti-Ahmadi campaign but their rivalries and differences remained intact

below the surface. Since 1974 when the Ahmedis had their status as Muslims

revoked by the state, later during Zia’s regime additional restrictions were enforced

on the Ahmadi community which disallowed them from public preaching. Sunni

fundamentalists have wanted to extend the argument regarding the precise definition

of who is or is not a Muslim from the tiny Ahmadi community to the much larger Shia

community. The boundaries of Muslim citizenship had become a political issue rather

than simply a religious one (Saeed 2007:145).

Some sectarian Sunnis also tend to greatly underestimate Shias as they are

sometimes portrayed by them as an unrepresentative elite community at the apex of

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a pyramid-like structured society enslaving the Sunni masses. Shia sectarian

organisations grossly inflate their numbers so to emphasis their relative community

strength and the growing appeal of their faith to new converts from the Sunni

Muslims. So estimates can be found that range widely, from as little as 2% to as

high as 35 % of Pakistan’s Muslim population. (Ahmed 1998:109,119). Most scholars

believe that the range 15% to 25% is more realistic, taking 20% as a median,

means that there are around 30 million Shias in Pakistan so far exceeding the figure

for third placed Iraq which probably has less than 20 million Shias. Pakistan’s Shia

population is more than 20% of total global Shia population (Nasr 2007:9-10).

Debates regarding the actual size of the Shia population are part of sectarian politics

in Pakistan.

So militant organizations took off only in the last three decades and thus are

themselves a new and powerful means of encouraging sectarian identities and of

expressing them, frequently with the show or the actual use of force. Other

influences on sectarian identities are not new: mosques and madrasas (seminaries

of Islamic education), have an important role where often matters of sectarian

identity are enhanced with new methods: mosques and madrasas not only have their

own well demarcated sectarian boundaries, but in addition many of them are also

intensely involved openly or secretly with extremist bodies. Much of the leadership of

such organizations comes from madrasas and comprises people who began their

careers as lower ranking clergy in small local mosques. The building of new

madrasas is also often sponsored by these organizations, and it is not too hard to

notice that a remarkable mushrooming of madrasas and the growth of sectarian

conflict tended to coincide in recent years.

Mosques, madrasas, the distribution of sectarian literature, the easy availability of

firearms and the emergence of sectarian groups have all contributed to an

environment of considerable socio-economic and political instability to encourage

what was once a minor issue. Though the purpose here is to trace the roots of

sectarian conflict in Pakistan, this dissertation also shows the importance of

sectarianism as a major form of religious change and social protest. So sectarianism

appears to its adherents as a form of liberation theology. The partial success of

urban sectarian organizations in spreading their ideology to the hinterland by setting

up new mosques and madrasas and redefining the religious life there, analysed in

the forthcoming pages, will show the spread of a reformist, urban, scripture focused

and relatively rigid form of sectarian identity which clashes with the tolerant ethos of

mystical and popular forms of the Islamic faith (Kumar 2004:701).

Pakistan has not yet and perhaps never will succumb totally to sectarianism, Shia-

Sunni sectarianism has not reached the levels of violence that Hindu-Muslim

communal conflict has in India, but sectarianism is an important political discourse in

Pakistan. By utilising Pakistan as the venue for the illustrating the role of

sectarianism, this dissertation attempts to enhance the understanding of

sectarianism. The main hypothesis is that the manipulation and instrumentalization

of sectarian and other ethnic identities as sources of political legitimacy have

considerably inhibited attempts towards nation-building in Pakistan. Sectarian and

ethnic identity politics have gravely damaged the development of nation-building as

they have prevented national reconciliation and the improvement of state-society

relations and a national identity in Pakistan.

Methodology

Sectarian identity: primordialism and instrumentalism

This thesis is concerned with sectarian identity politics, which falls in the broader

category of identity politics. Fundamental to identity politics, is the nature of identity.

Individuals and groups have multiple identities and a complex relationship exists

between these identities. Identity politics is the politics of recognition and the politics

of differences. There is a strong need to understand the nature, causes and

development of identity politics in Pakistan.

Some people assert that sectarian identities in themselves are responsible for violent

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conflict, but the variance in the patterns and levels of sectarian violence do not yield

validity to this line of argument. Why does sectarian violence occur in some places

while it is almost absent elsewhere in Pakistan? It may occur at specific places and

periods then stop but resurface in a region with no prior history of sectarian tension.

Let us start by discussing the term sect first which depicts a smaller religious group

that has branched from a larger established group. Sects share many beliefs and

rites in common with the main religious body that they have separated off from, but

are considered as distinct mainly by a number of doctrinal differences. Khan and

Chaudhry ( 2011:74) define Sectarianism in Pakistan as a form of religio-political

nationalism and as such, in their view its root causes are directly in identity

mobilization and ethnic conflict. It has metamorphosed from religious schism into

political conflict around communal identity. Sectarianism has articulated itself as a

political function and its militant forces operate in the political domain rather than

religious (Nasr 2004:86). So sectarianism falls in the field of the study of nationalism,

ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Borrowing concepts of influential instrumentalist social

scientists like Paul Brass (1991), Thomas Eriksen ( 2002), Eric Hobsbawm (1992),

Andreas Wimmer ( 2008) and considering religious or sectarian identity as a form of

ethnicity can help provide further insights. The instrumentalism here is the belief that

sectarian identities are in the process of being created and reshaped and their

alternative explanations to the tenuous situation in Pakistan will be explored in more

detail in the forthcoming chapters. Some of the means of imparting a sense of a

sectarian identity are relatively new. By focusing on a certain issue or selecting

community symbols, elites make it possible, to construct a sectarian identity by

giving attention to a real or imagined threat.

Recently, the printing and distribution of sectarian literature in local languages, which

attack the rights and claims of their rivals, has become a major role of sectarian

organizations in Pakistan. Audio and video recordings have supplemented this print

media. The spread of sectarian identity by modern means creates what Benedict

Anderson (1991:6) calls `imagined community because the members of even the

smallest nation (or sizeable sect) will never know most of their fellow members,

meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their

communion’. Anderson (1991:7) further adds that `it is imagined as a community,

because, regardless of actual inequity and exploitation that prevail in each, the

nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship’. Grace Davie ( 2007:

27) refers to the work of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who unlike previous Marxists

places more importance on the independent characteristics of religion, culture and

politics- supporting its power to influence autonomous of economic factors.

Central to Gramscian thinking is the concept of hegemony, which means elites

maintain their hold on politics by exploiting popular consensus. The process is so

total that the status quo is considered acceptable and even `natural’. Religion can be

used in both affirming and challenging the dominant social structure. In the later

situation, elites of disaffected groups can awaken a new consciousness. Therefore,

the Shias and Sunnis have become imagined communities. Steve Bruce ( 2003:11)

further adds that religious groups or sects are in advantageous strategic position, for

it is difficult and costly for any state to suppress the traditions of such groups

because they claim an authority higher than any available on this earth.

Sectarian identity can be attributed as a form of ethnic identity and sectarian

categories as distinct ethnic groups. Sectarianism can be seen as a form of ethnic

conflict. Before any assumptions can be made, there is a need to know what

constitutes an ethnic group. Most scholars agree that religion is an aspect of

ethnicity, as religion provides a strong measure of solidarity for a named human

population. Jonathan Fox (1997:5) adapts Ted Gurr’s definition of ethnic group as

“in essence, ethnic groups are psychological communities: groups whose core

members share a distinctive and enduring collective identity based on cultural traits

and life-ways that matter to them and to others with whom they interact. People have

many possible bases for ethnic identity: shared historical experiences of myths,

religious beliefs, language, region of residence, and in caste-like systems,

customary occupations. Ethnic groups are usually distinguished by several enforcing

traits. The key to identifying ethnic groups is not the presence of a particular trait or

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combination of traits, but rather in the shared perception that defining traits,

whatever they are, set the group apart.”

Jyoti Puri (2004:174) adds to this definition by highlighting that being held together

by a shared cultural identity however defined, an ethnic group recognizes itself and

is recognized by others.

As these are attributes that function as instruments for the development of an ethnic

group which is an informal political organization. Within the developing countries,

such a grouping is more stable and more effective in achieving its aims than a formal

association in which loyalties derive only from contractual interests. With these three

definitions added together sectarian identity can be attributed as a form of ethnic

identity and sectarian categories as distinct ethnic groups. This helps to develop a

theoretical framework where the politics of sectarianism especially the construction

of sectarian identity and conflict can be emphasized.

This discussion of ethnicity, nationalism and sectarianism in Pakistan initially projects

a picture where rival fractions are deeply hostile towards each other and sometimes

engaging in violence, what is important here in the political science context is how

and why such an unstable situation where diversity is not accommodated has

developed. This endeavour demands a theoretical understanding which continues to

be dominated by two opposing standpoints. The two major rival theories which

dominate the debates on ethnic conflict are termed the primordialist and

instrumentalist. Alone, each of them is inadequate and implausible. So there exists a

massive literature on ethnicity and ethnic conflict. In which attempts are made to

select and disregard certain aspects of both primordialism and instrumentalism.

In its most extreme form, the primordialist view is that ethnic attachments are so

persistence and intense- as they are the basic categories of society where given ties

of history and culture help to unite people into naturally defined groups. It explains

the high levels of passion and the self-sacrifice aspects of ethnic groups by the

importance of the strong attachments between group members for their collective

well-being based on the intimate links between ethnicity, kinship and territory.

People do not actively choose their ethnic identities. Clifford Geertz (1993: 259- 260)

says “ By a primordial attachment is meant one that stems from the `givens’ of social

existence : immediate contiguity and kin connection mainly, but beyond them the

givens that stems from being born into a particular religious community, speaking a

particular language, or even a dialect of a language, and following particular social

practices. These congruities of blood, speech, custom, and so on, are seen to have

an

“Ineffable and at times, overpowering, coerciveness in and of them. One is bound to

one’s kinsman, one’s neighbour, one’s fellow believer, ipso facto; as the result not

merely of personal affection, practical necessity, common interest, or incurred

obligation, but at least in great part by virtue of some unaccountable absolute import

attributed to the very tie itself. The general strength of such primordial bonds, vary

for each society, and from time to time. But for virtually every person, in every

society, at almost all times, some attachments seem to flow more from a sense of

natural affinity than from social interaction.”

Here ethnicity is largely seen as being interchangeable with culture, and culture itself

is considered more a rather static than as a fluid entity which provides the divide

between ethnic groups. Common cultural attributes provide a structure of internal

cohesion which also symbolizes continuity between the pre-modern and modern

(Eriksen 2002:55).

States, parties, bureaucracies, and politics are seen mainly as the expression of

these historical but immemorial ethnic cultural divides. The main drawback with

primordialism is that it finds it difficult to explain why some ethnic groups form,

change and merge with others and why patterns of ethnic conflict can be so uneven

and unstable. Primordialists give huge importance to emotional and instinctive

attributes as reasons for ethnic mobilization. People are regarded as intensively

emotional rather than rational beings in primordialist thinking as people are capable

of sacrificing themselves for the community rather than for just individual purposes

which instrumentalists find difficult to explain (Smith 2008:10).

19


The primordialist view is often rooted in nationalist especially extremist or sectarian

understanding of identity politics, less extreme versions sometimes appear in

scholarly works. Nation-states often portray and impose the primordialist view as the

official and authentic version by their control or influence of the media and

educational system. Political mobilization in which ethnicity dominates occurs when

ethnic groups seek to defend, sustain or propagate the interests of their own group.

This primordialist explanation implies that ethnic conflict is inevitable; it is the normal

outcome for primordial attachments.

Over time, the levels of awareness within an ethnic group about itself and perhaps

more importantly its relationship with other ethnic groups may change when it is

confronted with new challenges brought on by changing circumstances. One key

element which brings such a heightened consciousness among the masses of an

ethnic group is the role of elites within that ethnic group. Seeing an ethnic group as a

collectively within a larger social, memories of a shared historical or mythical

heritage and cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements such as religious

affiliation that led to emotional intensity and ethnic mobilization, but primordialists

usually have underestimated the political advantages gained from the exploitation of

these symbols by elites.

In strong contrast to primordialist explanations, instrumentalist understanding of

ethnicity conceives it as being socially constructed. Ethnic identities are not

considered here as being permanent, predetermined and naturally given, for the

most extreme instrumentalists like Paul Brass and Eric Hobsbawn ethnicity seems to

lack any pre-modern origins. Paul Brass (1991:16) gives huge emphasis perhaps

overemphasis on the role that elites play in shaping and reshaping identity by

distorting and sometimes even fabricating materials from the cultures of groups, for

political and socio-economic advantages. Elites here can be defined as high status

groups which have a high level of resources that the rest of society usually lacks but

aspires to achieve. Ethnic identity in this particular context is produced by rational

decisions taken by elites and followed by their constituencies. Although ethnic

groups have characteristics based on linguistic, religious or other social traits, the

solidarity between group members is not naturally given, instead it is a created and

dynamic bond based on political and economic interests.

So being the product of various political and socio-economic processes, ethnicity is a

flexible and highly fluid entity which has no fixed boundaries. Ethnic groups are

collectives which change in size depending on circumstances. At an individual level,

a person can belong to many ethnic groups simultaneously but identifies with a

particular one depending on the situation. In addition, the major theme of

instrumentalism is the process of selecting and manipulating symbols in order to

define boundaries, which serves the important role of identity formation as the basis

for political mobilization.

Elites are successful in establishing political movements based on ethnic divides

when showing the importance of the links between community interest and political

involvement rather than the specific elite interest which is submerged in the wider

interest rhetoric. The degree of success of elites in this task depends on the level of

intra-group cohesion based on communication and interaction between these elites

and their followers from the masses.

Anthony Smith, a leading scholar and moderate primordialist, does not deny that

ethnicity, can be manipulated by elites for political mobilization, elites do distort

existing myths, where he disagrees with the most avowed instrumentalists like Paul

Brass, is whether and how far, can elites can `invent’ them. Anthony Smith’s

contribution to the study of ethnicity is termed as ethno symbolism which is not totally

incompatible with instrumentalism and which can be seen as a bridging approach

(Conversi 2007:17- 25). Smith ( 2008:xi) considers ethno symbolism as a corrective

and useful supplement to the dominant modernist orthodoxy, by which he implies

instrumentalism. To some extent, ethno symbolism removes the instrumentalist-

primordialist dichotomy. The ethno symbolic approach towards the study of ethnicity

formulated by Smith appears to be the most appropriate for this study on Pakistan as

Pakistani elites are restricted by constraints imposed on them by religion and

nationalism, and so have to distort myths within these confines which they are very

adapt at doing.

It appears that ethnic mobilization is more common in agrarian based societies in

which autocratic modes of leadership dominate rather in advanced industrialized

21


democracies. The relationship between different ethnic groups and boundary

maintenance are important themes in instrumentalist studies of ethnicity (Eriksen

2002:9-10). For explaining sectarianism in Pakistan, the dynamics of identity

formation in instrumentalist theory and especially the importance on boundary

maintenance adapted and refined from the earlier works of Fredrick Barth on tribal

groups in northern Pakistan by Thomas Eriksen (2002) appear to be the most

appropriate.

For Thomas Eriksen (2002:9-10), contact and inter-relationships are the essential

determinants in identity formation, where ethnic or sectarian groups remain more or

less discreet, but they are still conscious of and in contact with the members of other

communities. In adding that, those groups, sects or other categories are in a sense

created through that very contact. Group identities must always be defined in relation

to they are not-in other words, in relation to non-members of the group.

Eriksen (2002:11-12) asserts that the dominant feature of identity groups is the

boundary lines of the group between these of insiders and outsiders, between us

and them. As he highlights that ‘if no boundary exists, there can be no identity, since

identity assumes an institutional relationship between alienated categories whose

members consider each other to be culturally distinctive’. So Shia Muslims in

Pakistan are still facing and reacting to Sunni Muslim hostility towards them partly

due to the emphasis placed on the relatively few differences between them which

continue to be problematic as the common core of shared beliefs and practices is

ignored. The differences themselves become the identity. The Shia and Sunni

identities now override the significance of broader Muslim identity.

Interdisciplinary

This dissertation does not aim to be just a study of religious extremism in Pakistan

as it is not one done in a university department of Islamic studies. This thesis uses a

chronological sequence, with the aim to analyse historical circumstances and events

that gave rise to the evolution of sectarianism. Historical analysis although important

in such a study is not in itself sufficient in developing an advanced knowledge of

sectarianism in Pakistan. A historical perspective helps to some extent in explaining

that sectarian identity politics is not a new phenomenon in Pakistan and that a fragile

state and uneven socio-economic development have caused, sustained and

reinforced sectarian and other ethnic identity politics over time. Rather a more

interdisciplinary approach is required and has been applied with the aim of

constructing a synthesis that will shed new light on the problem of Muslim

sectarianism of Pakistan. Anthropology, history, sociology, religious studies,

international relations and politics all provide relevant concepts, debates and

perspectives that can greatly enhance this task. Other social sciences can be added

to this list but I have confined myself to those what I am familiar with.

In the last few decades, ethnicity, nationalism and religious radicalism have emerged

as topics of special interest to many social scientists, especially those from the

disciplines of social anthropology, sociology and political science who together have

produced much of the academic literature concerned with the global revival of

identity politics and religion. The divide between social anthropology and sociology

has narrowed over the years as each now often uses methodology borrowed from

the other. Some universities even have joint departments. They are still separate

subjects. However, for the purposes of this study these two related disciplines have

been grouped together.

Ethnography

The primary research method most strongly associated with anthropology is

ethnography which is increasingly being taken up by sociologists, so probably the

distinctions between these two disciplines have lessened. Ethnography is an

underused methodology in political science; so underutilized is ethnography that, for

instance, in two leading American journals, The American Journal of Political Science

and the American Political Science Review, in the period 1996 to 2005, almost a

decade, of the 938 articles published, only one published in 1999 had ethnography

23


as its primary research method (Bayard de Volo & Schatz 2004: 267- 271). This is

nearly one in a thousand! So why is there such a resistance towards ethnography in

political science?

Ethnography provides insights into the processes and meanings that sustain and

enhance political power in communities. The reluctance in using ethnography in

political science is that it is regarded as being too limited to develop into

generalisations, as it by definition involves small sample size which may be difficult

to replicate. Ethnography can reveal much that interviewing, one of the methods

most favoured by political scientists, fails to do, while it can also be argued that the

mere presence of the anthropologist also distorts the behaviour of community being

studied. Anthropologists in contrast to most political scientists, prefer to focus on the

internal dynamics of sectarianism in their ethnographic studies- for instance, how

religious elites actually interact with their followers in the performance of rituals which

enhances identity formation (Bayard de Volo & Schatz 2004:268).

Anthropologists understand better how sectarianism has spread to wider society in

Pakistan while political scientists focus much more on the relationship between

militant sectarian groups and the state. As I am unable to undertake my own

ethnographic research in Pakistan due to my difficult personal circumstances, I have

instead incorporated the contributions of social anthropologists (Tor Aase, Hafeez-

ur-Rehman Chaudhry, Mary Hegland, Sarfraz Khan, and David Pinault etc) working

on sectarianism in Pakistan. Political scientists working on sectarianism in Pakistan

(eg.Vali Nasr, Muhammad Wassem and Mariam Abou Zahab etc.) have usually

shunned works of anthropology while anthropologists have only slightly used the

works of political scientists. I have used the contributions of both sets of social

scientists. However, I have also conducted interviews with relevant persons in the

UK as well as telephone interviews with such people in Pakistan. My other primary

sources include sectarian publications, speeches made by senior sectarian party

leaders on CD and YouTube videos on the web, articles and reports on sectarian

violence in Pakistani and international newspapers.

Thus this study uses the linkages between politics and other closely related social

sciences and attempts to seek how this relationship functions. There is here an

endeavour to bring new evidence to illuminate existing issues and pose new issues

that will enhance the collective body of knowledge on sectarianism. In attempting to

rethink sectarianism there is a need to reinterpret existing material on Pakistani

society and politics.

Overview of Chapters

The thesis consists of six chapters, including this introduction which also deals with

methodology. The next chapter is somewhat introductory in nature as it deals with

the initial thirty years of Pakistan. This provides a historical context to understand the

politics of Pakistan. The contrasting regimes of various military rulers, the civilian

administration of Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto and their relations with religious parties

dominate this period. The major upheavals of Pakistani history such the separation

of East Pakistan which became the nation-state of Bangladesh highlights the failure

of the nation building project and the legal exclusion of the Ahmedi sect by the

Pakistan state from the membership of the Islamic fold, both of which form

precedents for further turmoil. Chapter Three is concerned with the transformation of

the Sunni community, how political instability both outside and inside Pakistan

together with socio-economic change, influenced the gradual shift from quietist,

conservative and traditional Islam to a radical, activist and fundamentalist Islam.

Chapter Four focuses on developments within the Shia community. It follows a

similar pattern to chapter three but also highlights the growth and internal diversity of

the Shia community, the historical and trans-national links between the Pakistani

Shia community and Iran, as the degree of tolerance within Shi’ism is also contested.

Chapter Five which deals with sectarian conflict, concentrates on certain aspects of

sectarian history, perspectives, literature, parties and their interplay and their

influence on wider society. Chapter Six is the summary and conclusion.

25


Nationalism, Religion and Class in Pakistan,

c.1947-1977

Introduction

This chapter explores the complex and troubled relationship between nationalism,

religion and class in Pakistan during this period which is essential for understanding

why and how sectarianism became a powerful force in later periods. A huge corpus

of social science literature exists which deals with debates regarding nationalism and

nations, two reasons among many why such a vast body of work is still expanding is

that nationalism does not have a universally agreed definition and there are many

variants of nationalism. The rise of nationalism and the emergence of nation-states

from the disintegration of empires and the merger of provincial regions is a recent

development in the time line of human history. Nationalism, which could be seen as

the identity that binds or attempts to bind together groups of people above that of

tribal, regional and linguistic differences into a single nation. Religion is not just about

faith and practices, it too has this attribute, which makes it important like

nationalism in politics, as it also deals with collective identity, moral authority and

ultimate loyalty. Like nationalism which is a problematic term to define, religion

especially when dealing with the Semitic religions such as Christianity, Islam and

Judaism, and most Eastern religions apart from Confucianism and some variants of

Buddhism, can be seen as a structure of belief and rituals oriented towards the

sacred or supernatural, through which the life experiences of groups of people are

given significance and direction (Gill 2001:120).

The supernatural element is the most important part of this definition as it sets

religion apart from secular ideologies. Religion usually appears in an institutional

form as nearly all religions have regulations defining who is a member of the faith

community and which members are qualified to make decisions about doctrinal

matters and to act as its representatives. Religion is also about authoritative

relationships, especially in political science in which religion-state relations are of

paramount importance. Religion, which is a multifaceted phenomenon, is not just a

variant of culture. But is also structural: it serves the focus of a differential

instrumental subsystem. Like politics, religion is a social sphere that manifests both

the socio-specific and the global universal (Cesari 2005:86).

Throughout history especially in the pre-modern era, religion was the dominant form

of group identity for most people until empires eventually gave way to modern

nation-states. The eminent sociologist Anthony Giddens says nationalism even

secular nationalism appears to have features in common with religion such as ideas

27


and beliefs about political order but also psychological, symbolic and socio-economic

relationships (Juergensmeyer 2009:13). Whether nationalism has replaced religion

as the most important unifying or dividing identity is a contested issue especially but

not always in postcolonial countries. Yet for several forms of ethnic nationalism,

religion is a vital element especially if we consider for instance, Catholicism in Polish

nationalism and Judaism in Israeli nationalism where such a situation exists as a

single dominant religion prevails (Friedland 2001:138).

What we are dealing with in such examples is best described as religious

nationalism. Religious nationalism is a particular form of collective representation in

which membership and recognition depend not merely on the territorial nation-state

but on culturally specific categories, behaviour codes, moral values and historical

narratives (Friedland 1999:301-30 2). These characteristics of religious nationalism

make it more than just an identity but an ideology and a social movement. Mark

Juergensmeyer (1996:4-6) describes three major variants of religious nationalism:

ethnic religious nationalism, ideological religious nationalism and ethno-ideological

religious nationalism which as its name suggests combines elements of the previous

two. In ethnic religious nationalism, religious identity becomes a political identity in

pursuit of socio-economic or secular objectives, where the rivals are another ethnic-

religious group. In ideological religious nationalism, the reverse occurs, in which the

sacred dominates politics, where conflicts and issues are placed within a sacred

religious framework and the secular or even the ethnic religious state is regarded as

the enemy.

In ethno-ideological religious nationalism, there is a double set of foes, both other

ethnic-religious groups and the state. It is difficult to situate specific Muslim political

groups in each of these particular religious nationalism categories. Mainstream

parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Pakistan People’s Party

(PPP) in Pakistan may fall into the first category. The older Islamist groups seem to

be in the second, while the relatively newer more militant sectarian outfits such as

the SSP (Sipah–e-Sahaba Pakistan) in the third. Nationalism especially in its civic

form is seen as a modernist political entity which embraces an open pluralistic

society in which liberty, democracy, tolerance and equality are emphasized.

Religious nationalism is associated with closed, totalitarian societies which reject the

values of civic nationalism and instead is focused on a more narrow focus of a

particular community.

Religious nationalism is not a throwback to the medieval but is a modern endeavour

depending on circumstances, to compete or fuse elements with or even replace civic

nationalism in order to control state and society as it considers civic nationalism as

falling short of fulfilling expectations that modernization promised. The leadership of

ideological variants of religious nationalism such as Islamist or Islamic

fundamentalist organizations is not usually the high ranked traditional religious elite

such as from the older established seminaries or those descended from Saintly Sufi

lineages. Its support base is not the poorest segments of society such as much of

the working class or the rural peasantry. Religious nationalism appeals to segments

of the urban middle class especially lower middle class which provides the bulk of its

support base. Secularly educated technical people such as medical doctors,

engineers and scientists dominate the leadership of Islamist political organizations

(Metcalf 2007:289).

British India, Muslim Nationalism and Pakistan

The All India Muslim League was the political party that championed the ideology of

Muslim nationalism, here Muslim nationalism can be seen as an ethnic religious

nationalism as it was a nationalism built on the ethnicity of being Muslim, in which

29


Muslim religious identity became a political identity and the rivalry was between

Muslims and Hindus which ignored tensions within the Muslim community. It was led

by the British educated lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah obtained the majority of Muslim

votes and seats in the elections of 1945-46 which had the greatest impact on the

future of South Asia. In 1947 the sovereign state of Pakistan was created from nearly

all the Muslim majority provinces of British India. The emergence of Pakistan as an

independent Muslim majority state was not a complete victory for the Muslim League

as Muslim majority Kashmir stayed in the Indian union while the largest Muslim

majority provinces, Bengal and Punjab were divided between Pakistan and India.

The extremely violent break-up of British India into two independent states also

challenged the Congress party’s claim that it was a secular organization that

represented all Indian religious communities. As Hindu nationalism within the

Congress fold especially at grassroots level helped to enhance the alienation of

many Muslim politicians, many of whom abandoned it and in increasing numbers

joined its main political rival the Muslim League (Gould 2000:91). The Muslim

League successfully used the rhetoric of religious nationalism insisting that there

existed only two distinct nations in British India each with its own mutually exclusive

cultural attributes and opposing socio-economic interests, one being the Hindu

majority and the other being the Muslim minority. Hindu and Muslim were recognized

by the Muslim League leadership as the major binary divisions rather than those on

the lines of region, language, class, caste and sect. Hinduism and Islam were often

portrayed as homogenous entities despite the numerous internal differences that

manifest South Asian society.

Some sixteen years prior of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s own conversion to Muslim

nationalism, as he once was a staunch Congressman who later joined the Muslim

League seven years after its formation, the supreme Hindu nationalist (Hindutva)

idealist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) had proclaimed that the Hindu

majority and Muslim minority in British India were two distinct and hostile nations

(Nandy 2009:3). For Savarkar, Hindus were not just a mere religious community but

a sacred brotherhood whose faith (dharma) represents what he defines as the

indigenous culture and religious tradition of India, while Muslims and Christians are

outside this fold as their religions are of trans-national nature and so they are

deemed to have rejected their Indian heritage. Savarkar considers Sikhs, Jains and

Buddhists despite being Non-Hindus as a part of the greater Hindu family (Parivar)

of religions as Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism have their origin in India.

He considers Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism as having evolved from Hindu sects

eventually into separate religions. So not only do both Hindu and Muslim religious

nationalism share common traits, ironically they both vitally need each other to

survive. These viewpoints of Hindu-Muslim cultural, social and historical

incompatibility were projected by politicians like Jinnah and Savarkar both of whom

despite not being pious individuals had astutely resorted to use powerful rhetorical

language for political mobilization purposes. Savarkar even acknowledged with

somewhat delight that Jinnah had eventually reached the same conclusions (Nandy

2009:4).

The partition of Imperial India and the birth of Pakistan as a geographical entity

represented for the Muslim League the emancipation of the Muslim majority

provinces and Muslim refugees from minority Muslim provinces, from the domination

or the threat of domination posed by a hostile Hindu majority Raj. The major initial

drawback of this endeavour was that a substantial Muslim minority was left behind in

India which is the largest Muslim minority in the world. Indian Muslims especially

those in northern and central India experienced discrimination and violence as they

had been the most vocal support base of the Muslim league and had provided much

of its early leadership and funding.

The majority Muslim provinces situated in the northwest and northeast of British

India comprised two wings of the new-born state of Pakistan separated by India until

the more ethnically homogenous eastern wing which despite its numerical superiority

suffered cultural and socio-economic disadvantages at the hands of the western

wing emerged as the newly independent state of Bangladesh after the third Indo-

Pakistan war in 1971. This represented another failure for the ideology of Muslim

31


nationalism as it was unable to accommodate the rights and aspirations of the

Bengali Muslims who were the majority of united Pakistan’s population but began to

gradually feel alienated as it appeared to them that they were just a colony of the

western wing rather than equal partners.

Ironically, Bengali Muslims among the Muslim majority provinces of British India had

welcomed the Muslim League to far greater extent than any of the provinces in the

western wing of Pakistan. The Muslim League was seen by Bengali Muslims as

liberators from the `Hindu Raj’ of landed elite Hindus especially the upper caste

Brahmins who dominated virtually all spheres of socioeconomic life (Bose 2009:1).

While the Punjabi Muslim leadership represented a consolidated rural landed elite

that formed the apex of Punjabi society. The urban intelligentsia and petite

bourgeoisie of the Punjab were largely high caste Hindus. The Punjabi Hindus did

not own much land in western Punjab but they were better educated than the

Muslims, therefore were more represented in the civil service and modern

professions. Colonial Punjab had several influential indigenous groupings competing

for greater inclusion into the imperial state apparatus, including the Sikhs, the former

rulers of the Punjab whose overall socio-economic community profile overlapped

both those of the Muslims and Hindus. The Bengali Muslims lacked the resources of

any of these powerful groups; they were a middle class in the making (Bose 2009:

2).

The social structure of Pakistan is very multifaceted as it has elements of the caste

system inherited from its Hindu past. Caste as a social organization has less scope

for social mobility than class, to some extent caste and class categories overlap in

Pakistan as it does in India. Most but not all of Pakistan’s elites are from high caste

origins. This is particularly true of rural landlords who still provide a large proportion

of its political leadership while for their peasants it is the opposite. Yet not all

Pakistanis from high ranking caste groups are privileged but they take pride in

belonging to the same group as the elites.

In the urban areas especially in the major cities, greater exposure to capitalism and

religious reform movements have to some degree produced an economy where the

social functions of various castes are longer restricted to their ancestral occupations.

One aspect of the caste hierarchy which still resists change is of the institution of

marriage patterns which maintains that marriage is confined to caste groups of the

same or similar status. Apart from the Zulifkhar Ali Bhutto era, class by itself has

seldom been a powerful institution for political mobilization in Pakistan as individual

loyalties are hinged on clan and caste. Both clan and caste overlap over class

boundaries (Lyon 2002:19). Class becomes a more successful mobilizing political

tool when linked with religious identity and the next chapters of this thesis deal with

this aspect in more depth.

After 1947, the continued elite manipulation of religious sentiment has been more of

liability to Pakistan rather than an asset. During the campaign for Pakistan, religious

nationalism provided a useful tool in combating both moderate and extremist

opposition to the Muslim League which came from sources as wide as regionally

based parities such as the Punjab Unionists focusing on agrarian issues and

religious fundamentalists from both the Muslim and Hindu communities. Religious

nationalism could only mask temporarily the deep cultural, socio-economic and

sectarian divisions prevalent in Muslim society. Islamic brotherhood failed to

construct a strong national Pakistani identity and thus religious identity was not

enough to entirely overwhelm other competing identities.

As the partition of the British India was done on religious symbols lines submerged

regional, linguistic and social identities among Muslims which during the Pakistan

campaign could fragment Muslim unity were frowned upon by the leadership officially

yet the same leaders often used such bonds to gather support from their own

regional bases. National identity focused solely on a particular religion was limited in

its power to enhance a strong sense of belonging as social inequality and ethnic

imbalances impacted more on the daily lives. Sub-national identities challenge the

unitary culture imposed by the state which only recognizes diversity as a source of

weakness as it is seen as fragmenting the contingency because rival claimants to

power can gather support on themes not addressed by the state. In addition,

Muhammad Iqbal regarded as a national icon of Pakistan, sees Islam and modern

territorial nationalism as conflicting ideologies for building an Islamic society ,

33


nationalism helps to bring people together but it simultaneously divides them and

maintains that division, for its attributes of solidarity, race, language and territory-

cannot be easily be acquired by migrants. Some of these attributes which cannot be

changed or are difficult to change have a negative impact on Islamic brotherhood

(Lieven 2011:1 24).

Sub-national movements based on ethnicity, focused on the level of representation

their communities have at the national level are regarded by the state as anti-

national as Pakistan failed in most instances to meet their demands for greater

inclusion in the state apparatus, but the most contested theme in the early years of

Pakistan was the extent to which the role of Islam had on its state and society - the

intense rivalry between the sacred and the secular. Most of the leaders of the ruling

Muslim League came from an elite group which included among its ranks educated

lawyers like Jinnah, other professional people, merchants, journalists, civil servants,

military personnel and rural notables. This elite group would have faced stiff

competition from Hindu elites in a united India but now Pakistan provided them with

a space where the Muslim elites have complete and unchallenged socio-economic

control. They had envisaged Pakistan as a Muslim majority entity not an Islamic

state where the sacred law was paramount despite their tactical use of religious

rhetoric in securing its establishment.

Most of the founding fathers of Pakistan were educated at elite British institutions

such as Oxbridge, Sandhurst and the Inns of Court, some of them were not

personally pious people, they consciously therefore did not want to construct a

religious state (Bruce 2003:186-187). Other reasons why they opposed a theocratic

state were that they all came from diverse sectarian backgrounds. Taking the

example of Jinnah, who was originally from an Ismaili Shia family, the followers of

the Aga Khan but probably later, he had converted to Imami Shi’ism (Nasr 2006:88-

90). The Ismaili Shias in India also known as Khojas followed a religion, which was

until the arrival of the Aga Khans from Iran to India during the nineteenth century, an

eclectic mix of elements derived from Shi’ism and Hinduism. The Aga Khans started

a campaign to eliminate most Hindu inspired doctrines and customs from Indian

Ismailism, which made it closer to mainstream Islam. This purge also had split the

Khoja community in three parts, as some of them converted back to their ancestral

Hinduism or went in the opposite direction by joining other branches of Islam. Most

Khojas however welcomed the Aga Khan’s religious reforms and remained his

committed followers.

It is strange to learn that the founding father of Pakistan had such an origin steeped

in Hindu-Muslim syncretism. On the other hand, perhaps this background produced

a fear that that Khoja community might lapse back into Hinduism, so a more

demarcated Muslim identity was required to preserve it. Jinnah’s Islamic credentials

were dubious on two aspects : firstly he was a not pious Muslim and his Khoja

origins were at odds with the majority of the League’s membership who were mainly

Sunnis with a considerable Imami Shia minority which almost reflected the sectarian

ratio of the general Muslim population. However the Khoja community being

descended from converts from the merchant Hindu castes was one of the few

business Muslim groups in British India and their financial clout helped their leader

the Aga Khan become a leading figure in the Muslim League. The Raja of

Mahmudabad, Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan (1914-1973), the largest Shia landlord

in Uttar Pradesh, had been one of the biggest financial supporters of the Muslim

League (Kazimi 2009:133), in 1940 he had written to Jinnah demanding an Islamic

state not just a Muslim majority state. Jinnah refused stating that which Islam and

whose Islam would eventually led to the dissolution of such a state. In 1970, the Raja

wrote that he was wrong and Jinnah was right (Kazimi 2009:135).

This liberal aspect of Muslim nationalism is that is it extremely tolerant of all Muslim

sects. All Muslim sects and sub-sects are welcome even those sects regarded as

being at the fringes of the Islamic religious spectrum. Here no precise doctrinal

definition of what is or who is a Muslim exists. During the Partition riots of 1947,

Sikhs and Hindus who had paid little attention to the internal diversity within South

Asian Islam attacked Muslims regardless of sectarian affiliation. Even Muslims, who

had opposed the Muslim League, had been attacked during this extremely traumatic

period. Muslim nationalism saw all Muslim victims of such violence as Muslims

regardless of their actual sectarian allegiance or degree of religious observance.

This one reason for such an outlook is that Muslim unity is paramount in Muslim

35


nationalism, which is also a feature to some extent in Hindu nationalism as some of

its adherents oppose the rigid caste hierarchies that divide traditional Hindu society.

The struggle against the secular elite’s hold on Pakistan was mainly posed by

Islamist organizations. Having largely opposed the Muslim League’s demand for

Pakistan and feeling rather irrelevant in the new state, Islamists like Mawdudi laid

down conditions that future leaders of Pakistan should fulfil if they were to be

regarded as legitimate Muslim rulers. The importance of Islam to Pakistan was not to

be confined to the idea of it as a Muslim majority space but as a place where the

rigid application of Islamic laws were paramount over other laws and such a

discourse was rendered possible by the gap that existed between Pakistan’s elites

and regional identities, which became more pronounced due to inequality in the

power structure of the country.

Islamists despite their profound differences with secular elites over the issue of the

extent to which Islamic laws were relevant in a modern nation-state both arrived

towards building a consensual understanding between them especially when

regarding the emergence of a third force in the politics of Pakistan which came in the

form of ethno-regionalism as these sub-national movements were seen as

challenging the very existence of the state rather than simply defining its secular or

religious orientation.

This Pakistani state had a dual relationship with Islamists as a resource needed to

fight against the threat of regionalism. Pakistani identity is not regarded as supreme

unless it supersedes regional identity. To be able to achieve this, national identity

requires that religious identity be more emphasized as it creates stronger bonds

between Muslims of different ethnicities and simultaneously weakens the bonds

between Muslims and non-Muslims of the same ethnicity. It does not eliminate but

only marginalizes other identities such as regional, linguistic, cultural, social and

other aspects of identification which exist within the complex mosaic of society. The

Punjab region of South Asia, part of which is now the most important province of

Pakistan, once had a common Punjabi identity which was based on language, food,

dress and folk culture but was eroded by the increased importance given to the

religious boundaries of Muslim and Non-Muslim (Hindu and Sikh).

Within a few decades, religious differences overtook ethnic commonalities,

developing into political identities in which social divisions such as caste, class and

sect were temporarily submerged. Cultural nationalism, political sovereignty and the

territorial tussles are key features of post colonial states like Pakistan and India (Puri

2004:170-171). So the Muslim identity of Muslim Punjabis in Pakistan was greatly

emphasized at the expense of their Punjabi identity breaking bonds with Non-Muslim

Punjabis in India. Religious identities became distinctive to the Punjabi communities

in this respect unlike for instance the Pashtun community, which did not have non-

Muslim members like Sikhs and Hindus. There was no need to over emphasise the

Muslim identity of the Pashtun. Being a Pashtun also simultaneously meant being a

Muslim as all Pashtuns are Muslims (Saikal 2010:9). The major divisions in Pashtun

society have always been tribal affiliation which has sometimes resulted in warfare.

When comparing the two forms of nationalism in Pakistan and India, the form of

nationalism in Pakistan is focused more on religious identity where it is hoped that

other identities are or will be submerged as Islam is the primary factor for the binding

of a diverse population whose only common bond is adherence to Islam.

Pakistani nationhood has developed a hostile attitude towards other forms of identity,

often seeing them as a dangerous rival that may eventually lead to the fragmentation

of Pakistan. This hostile attitude has its roots in the campaign for Pakistan in which

the Muslim League believed that Muslims need their own state in order to create a

space where only they dominated and their unity was paramount as diversity was

considered as a factor that could undermine that constructed unity as the ultimate

political contest was portrayed by the league as being between the Hindu majority

and Muslim minority, so diversity within a minority was seen as more damaging to its

political interests than that posed by diversity in the majority. This is a factor why the

Indian state has been somewhat less hostile than the Pakistani state towards

diversity. India has also a long history of conflict between the centre and some of its

states but India lacks an overwhelming majority in the way Punjabi Muslims are

dominant in Pakistan.

37


Pakistani nationalism hinges on the concept that a single religion unifies the majority

of its population and so appears to satisfy the basis for its nationhood. This rather

simple form of religious nationalism was successful in the early period of Pakistan’s

history to keep dissent among dominated Muslim ethnicities of Pakistan to a

minimum, especially in the aftermath of the violent inter-religious communal rioting of

the 1947 partition, but when the main political contest of them-and –us of Hindus

versus Muslim could not resolve the socio-economic aspirations of the dominated

Muslim ethnicities, the state itself become to be seen as the instrument of dominant

Muslim ethnicities.

The many diverse Muslim ethnicities that competed for greater shares in the

Pakistani decision making apparatus were often grouped in rival alliances. The roots

of these alliances could be traced to the British Raj period and beyond where

Muslims in different regions of South Asia existed alongside Hindus but had different

socio-economic and demographical attributes whose legacies then helped to

produce local disparities and accounted for regional inequalities within Pakistani

society.

Compared to its main rival the Congress party, the Muslim League was a more elite

focused political organization in which most of its leadership were either from the

great landlord clans or lawyers. These two categories to an extent overlapped as

many lawyer-politicians were from lesser landlord lineages. The roots of Muslim

separatism were in the Hindu-majority Indo-Ganges plains of northern India, where

Muslim upper classes were more densely distributed as compared to other areas of

South Asia. The upper strata of Muslim society became very apprehensive of

marginalization in an independent united India where Hindu elites would dominate.

These Muslim elites were losing power to the elite caste Hindus such as Brahmins,

Rajputs and Kaysaths, who started in the early twentieth century to outnumber their

Muslim counterparts in the administrative ranks that were open to Indians in the

imperial bureaucracy (Page 1999:8).

Within the privileged strata of Hindu society, strong rivalries existed between the

Brahmin, Rajput and Kaysath castes but such internal differences became

submerged and were overlooked whenever they were in conflict with Muslims over

the issue of over-representation of Muslims in the colonial administration of northern

India. Under such a situation, internal differences within Muslims also became

submerged so that many Shias both Imami and Ismaili occupied high ranks in the

Muslim League including on several occasions its supreme leadership despite Shias

being heavily outnumbered by Sunnis in its general membership.

The majority of British Punjab’s Muslims both Sunnis and Shias lived in the

countryside, where the institution of Sufism prevails. Rural Punjab is dotted with

hundreds of Sufi Shrines, visited by followers (murids) of various Sufi orders. Each

shrine was built on the burial ground of a Sufi Saint (Pir) and these shrines were

cared for by the living descendents of the Pir were themselves accorded Pir status.

Over the centuries, Islamic mysticism became institutionalized and Pirs welded great

influence and power. Pirs appealed not only to Muslims but also to Hindus and

Sikhs. During the nineteenth century, religious reformist and revivalist movements

appeared in each of Punjab’s three major religious communities.

One feature that they all shared was that they denounced Sufism. The Muslim

League realized after its electoral defeat of 1930s that it needed to develop local

roots. The patron-client networks of Sufi Pirs and their murids helped the Muslim

League to become successful in the next decade as both modernist and traditional

Islam were joined together in a political alliance against fundamentalist Islam

(Oldenburg 2010:26). Pirs may also have helped the Muslim League, as some of

them being landlords feared the land reform policy of the radical wing of the

Congress. In a Congress dominated India their socio-economic status would be

undermined but the Muslim League being preoccupied with Hindu-Muslim politics

could not afford to alienate such a powerful lobby.

In addition to the socio-economic competition between the two religious

communities, the cultural divide between them increased as most upper caste

39


Hindus increasingly turned towards Hindi as their chosen language while Muslims

strengthened their allegiance to Urdu. Initially, this language preference was not

based on religious affiliation as in urban areas of UP (United Provinces/Uttar

Pradesh) and Bihar, Urdu was more widely spoken than Hindi by both religious

communities but the ascendancy of high caste Hindus with strong rural roots in the

political sphere, gave the Hindi-Urdu linguistic debate a strong identification with the

Hindi-Muslim religious divide.

So Urdu become an important aspect of elite Muslim identity and regional Muslim

upper and professional classes elsewhere in British India especially in the Punjab

began to acquire Urdu as a secondary language, this became more enhanced as

some of them were educated at the premier Muslim dominated educational

establishment of India, Aligarh University.

So Urdu became more than a regional language it transcended ethnic boundaries

among Muslim elites so they considered it as a tool useful in unifying diverse

regional groups into a more solid entity that could bargain with greater authority with

the colonial administration over socio-economic demands.

Therefore, Pakistan was to have a uniform identity, one nation, one religion, one

culture and one language that sidelined diversity as a threat to national

cohesiveness. Such a simplistic construction of nationalism was not realistic.

Pakistan contained many ethnic groups with long histories which had considerable

cultural and social baggage that simply could not be disregarded under the state’s

aim of deliberately constructing and imposing a national identity regardless of what

such ethnic groups actually needed and demanded.

One ethnic group indigenous to Pakistan that supported the concept of a uniform

national culture and identity were the Punjabis, the largest ethnic group in the west

wing of Pakistan. Prior to 1947, Punjabi Muslims were largely rural the urban centres

of the Punjab were dominated by Hindu high castes such as Brahmins and Khatris

who were the most educated community in the Punjab followed at a distance by the

Sikhs with Muslims a distant third. After 1947, the regional vacuum made by the

departure of non-Muslim business and professional classes was partially fulfilled by

the emerging Punjabi Muslim middle class. However, the main strength of the

Punjabi Muslim community was its dominance of the British Indian military since the

mutiny/revolt of 1857.

Punjabis were the largest ethnic group in the British Indian Army, rural Muslims and

Sikhs were especially fond of military service. Over half the British Indian army were

Punjabis, most were from the western districts that later became Pakistan. Even

before WW1, Punjabi Muslims represented the overwhelming majority of the total

number of Muslim personnel in the British Indian army (Hussain 2005:57-58).

Pakistan having inherited this colonial legacy now faced further internal dissent as

most other ethnic groups apart from Pashtuns were largely underrepresented in the

military.

This imbalance become more politically significant when Pakistan had a Bengali

speaking majority in its population, a Punjabi minority that dominated the military and

a civil service in which Punjabis and uprooted north Indian urban Muslims due to

their superior education were together in the majority. Nationally, the industrial and

business sector was dominated by Gujarati Muslims often from Shia Ismaili

merchant lineages who had taken over the role of the expelled Hindu merchant

communities so benefiting from the break-up of British India.

The formation of Pakistan had liberated many Bengali Muslim peasants from the

exploitation of high caste Hindu landlords. However the Bengali Hindu elite

dominance was replaced by the dominance of non-Bengali Muslim control over the

civil and military apparatus of the new state. In 1965, Bengali Muslim share of the

Pakistan army officer class was a dismal 5% (Bhattacharya 2004:51), but the

Bengali Muslim share was also confined to the lower ranks. This factor in

combination with cultural divergence moved Bengali Muslims towards the direction of

demanding greater autonomy within the wider framework of Pakistan.

The fear of the radical politics of Bengali Muslim sub-nationalism and of the impact

that it may have on other aspiring sub-nationalities within Pakistan, alarmed the

41


Pakistani establishment into launching an unsuccessful military campaign with help

from Islamists which resulted in Pakistan’s humiliating defeat and dismemberment.

Islamists in both wings of Pakistan strongly opposed ethnic separatist movements as

they believed that emphasis on ethnicity undermined Islamic brotherhood. This

aspect of Islamist ideology is used by Pakistan’s elites against ethnic secessionists

and is one of the reasons why there exists a working relation between them. East

Pakistan emerged as Bangladesh in 1971, while in Pakistan itself sub-nationalism

which had been submerged in the one unit scheme, resurfaced. Other identities such

as sectarian identity gained more importance as Shias were now a much larger

percentage of the overall Pakistani population, as East Pakistan a predominantly

Sunni region became the independent nation-state of Bangladesh.

The New Pakistan

Pakistan emerged out of the 1971 crisis as a new but truncated Pakistan where the

defeated military was discredited due to its brutality in its operations against the

Bengali populace and perhaps more importantly by its humiliating surrender to arch

rival India. It also showed that the instrumental use of religion failed to hold the two

wings of Pakistan together. However the most positive outcome from this military

misadventure was that a civilian administration was eventually allowed to come into

power. The military was unable to govern on its pretext that it was the nation’s

territorial protector. Pakistan’s new leader was the charismatic but dictatorial Zulfiqar

Ali Bhutto (1928-1979), the founder of the Muslim League’s main rival the PPP

(Pakistan People’s Party), which had won the majority of the national and assembly

seats in Pakistan mainly concentrated in the Punjab and Sindh, in what were the first

direct elections in Pakistan’s history held in 1970. Despite being an Oxbridge

educated Sindhi feudal, Bhutto cleverly used the language of egalitarian idealism to

gather populist support, which he described as Islamic socialism. He would tell the

masses that ‘Roti, Kapra, Makan' (bread, clothes, shelter) were the basics of his

ideology.

Bhutto attempted to build the PPP on a wide social support base which represented

a complex task as there were strong factional rivalries among politicians and various

contradictory interests and demands of the various social classes that make up

Pakistan’s society. Bhutto bolstered his position by the use of strong rhetorical

language to put forward his agenda to win and maintain power, stating that Islam is

our faith, Democracy is our political system, and Socialism is our economic system

and finally Power to the people.

By declaring Islam is our faith, Bhutto not only utilized a pillar of Pakistani

nationalism but also to some extent made a decisive break from the Ayub Khan

regime under which he had began his national political career by serving first as its

commerce and later its foreign minister. The Ayub military dominated administration

had clashed with the Ulema and the Islamists by reforming Muslim family law. By

emphasizing democracy and power to the people slogans, Bhutto expanded his

support base among the general populace who had felt excluded from the elite

dominated politics of the Ayub era. Many middle class liberal and left-wing

intellectuals sidelined by the military for long periods of Pakistan’s history saw in

Bhutto, an opportunity for their social class to have a role in policy making. Socialism

is our economic system placed the PPP further up the populist agenda as the rural

poor and industrial workers had not obtained much benefit from the rapid economic

growth rates under Ayub which had greatly enhanced the wealth of the private

sector. By his partial nationalization and trade unionization policies, which were seen

as causes for the stagnating of economic growth, Bhutto had alienated some

powerful Industrialists who in turn, covertly began to support right-wing religious

groups.

Bhutto’s rivals especially those from the Ulema and the Islamists soon reacted to his

concept of Islamic socialism by stating that Islam and socialism were contradictory

terms and they put intense pressure on Bhutto to Islamize Pakistan. By 1973, Bhutto

deflected some of their anger by taking steps to Islamize Pakistan. Bhutto was also

targeted by many in the religious lobby as they regarded him as an amoral person

unfit to lead a Muslim majority nation. Bhutto was not a religiously pious person,

43


having a well earned reputation for drinking and womanizing which had started while

being an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. Bhutto openly

admitted in one of his speeches that he did drank alcohol but simultaneously Bhutto

was very critical of his rivals whom he described as being greater sinners, accusing

them of drinking the blood of the subaltern classes by their cruel methods of socio-

economic exploitation.

For the first time in its history, Pakistan had now a ministry for religious affairs

headed by an ex-member of the Jammat-e Islami, Maulana Kauiser Khan Niazi. Both

the populist and Islamist constituencies were temporarily won over by curbs on

gambling, alcohol and nightclubs which were seen as elite and westernized pursuits.

The weekly holiday was made Friday (the Muslim Sabbath) instead of Sunday.

Ironically, Bhutto’s political ascendancy began when he had led popular opposition to

Ayub Khan’s compromise with India on the issue of the disputed territory of Kashmir

in the aftermath of the Indo-Pak War of 1965 which also started the painful downfall

of the Ayub regime. Once at the helm of power, Bhutto realized that India was too

much of a powerful adversary that could not be defeated by military means. Further

negotiations with India were the only safe options open to Pakistan. The Simla

agreement of 1972 had put Bhutto in a similar position as his last but one

predecessor.

Bhutto increasingly turned towards Islam and the wider Islamic world as a means of

representing himself as a strong leader of a Muslim majority nation that could with

the backing of its co-religionist countries stand up to a hostile Hindu majority India. In

February 1974, the second international Islamic Conference was held in Lahore.

Greater economic links were established with richer Muslim states. The oil rich Gulf

countries were successfully encouraged to take both professionals, skilled and

unskilled labour from Pakistan. Punjabis, Pashtuns and Muhajirs potentially regarded

politically as the most troublesome communities were especially recruited for

employment. The remittances helped Pakistan’s economy and political stability as

the frustrations caused by the lack of employment were lessened. However,

Pakistani workers in the Gulf returned home rich and independent from Pakistan’s

traditional elites and some of them had become radicalized during their stay in

countries where more rigid interpretations of Islam were practiced especially towards

gender and religious ceremonial issues.

The slide towards greater religious revivalism, both at the level of the state and

among communities had brought more detrimental rather than beneficial impacts on

the PPP. As the PPP was opposed by the religious right, the PPP was especially

supported by religious minorities both non-Muslim and Muslim. Ahmadis and Shias

were strongly associated with the PPP as they were often the rivals of Sunni

hardliners. Shias especially supported the PPP as the PPP was more secular than

its rivals and minority Muslim sects tend to support secular parties as sectarianism is

less of an issue than with religious parties. An additional factor was that the Bhutto

clan itself is widely regarded as being Shia despite that recently some members of it

now portraying themselves as Sunnis (Nasr 2006:88-90).

Ahmadis, Deobandis and the Pakistan state

While the Ahmadis supported the PPP believing that Bhutto was a similar character

to and the heir of Jinnah’s legacy as both were westernized barristers who utilized

religion for political advantage but were devoid of actual sectarian inclinations. Under

Jinnah, the foreign minister of Pakistan was an Ahmadi Barrister, Sir Zafrullah Khan

and most Ahmadis had shown support for the Pakistan campaign and Pakistani

Ahmadi soldiers had been honored for sacrificing their lives in Indo- Pakistan wars.

However since the 1950s, the role of Ahmadis in Pakistan was increasingly

challenged by Islamists who felt that the minute Ahmadi community welded much

more power that its mere numbers could justify. The 1970s saw the renewal of the

anti-Ahmadi movement, in which both doctrinal and political issues intertwined

together were intensely debated.

45


The scale of anti-Ahmadi feeling was more popular in the early 1970s than it had

been in the 1950s when the prime minister was Sir Khawaja Nazim-ud-din, a devout

Muslim, this was possibly as Bhutto was a really a rival rather than an ally of

fundamentalists. In 1973, following the example of Afghanistan half a century earlier

(Magnus and Naby 200 2:91), the Assembly of Pakistani governed Azad Kashmir

declared that Ahmadis outside the Muslim community and so defined as a non-

Muslim community. In addition, curbs were placed on Ahmadi proselytizing. Faced

with increasing pressure from the industrialist and Islamists segments of Pakistani

society, Bhutto gave into opposition demands in 1974 by conceding that Ahmadis

were non-Muslims. Ironically, Bhutto’s minister of religious affairs, Maulana Kauser

Niazi who was once himself an Islamist, had advised him not to meet the demands

of the Islamists and fundamentalists (Haqqani 2005:107).

The Pakistani state like that of Afghanistan was itself now reluctantly involved in

promoting and participating in sectarianism. The Ahmadis despite having some

unique religious beliefs view themselves as Hanafi Sunnis and strongly oppose the

counterclaims of their opponents. The movement against the Ahmadis was largely

spearheaded by Deobandis but backed by both Shia and non-Deobandi Sunni

organizations (Jan, Najeeb 2010:195).

By having a common target as in the case of the besieged Ahmadi community, Shias

especially their Ulema initially welcomed the prosecution of Ahmadis as Shias

themselves were not the targets and also Shia could join with Sunnis in a common

cause where Shia-Sunni differences would be marginal as in the movement for

Pakistan. So Shias and Sunnis of all sub-sects united under a single banner of anti-

Ahmadism which helped to mask deep underlying internal divides. Similarly in

Turkey, the tiny Yazidi sect who also have some unique beliefs have been

persecuted by both the minority Shias and majority Sunnis (Kocan and Oncu

2004:476).

The Shia Ulema welcomed this new binary divide of Muslim versus Ahmadis, as this

would make Shias a more integral part of the Sunni dominated Pakistan society and

thus less prone from violence from Sunnis. This alignment resembled to some extent

the situation in undivided Punjab on the eve of partition where Sikhs and Hindus

despite their multitude of differences were allied together against the Muslims.

Similarly up to a certain level like the Sikhs had done with Hinduism, Shias wanted

simultaneously to maintain the religious boundaries between Shi’ism and Sunnism,

so that the contradictory aims of the Shia Ulema caused future discord as in the

similar case of Hindu-Sikh relations.

Several leading Shia elites such as the more farsighted Talpurs, once the Baluch

rulers of pre-British Sindh, became dismayed with the increased role of religion in the

state and society of Pakistan (Jalalzai 1998:19). The only large Shia-Sunni riot to

take place in relatively harmonious rural Sindh despite its large Shia minority,

occurred in the Talpur’s ancestral district of Khairpur in 1963, which probably

accounts for their dim outlook (Zahab 2002:125). The Talpurs having realized that

once the demands of the anti-Ahmadi lobby were fully meet, the more extreme

Sunnis in that lobby would emerge more confident and turn their attention towards

further targets. The next target in line for Deobandi hardliners would probably be

Shias as a people and Shi’ism as an ideology.

This sad prediction of senior Shia politicians which was not shared by their Ulema

emerged into reality as the tiny Ahmadi community did not have an adequate level of

resources at its disposal to fend off Deobandi led prosecution and delays a possible

Deobandi-Shia conflict. The Deobandis with their greatly inflated ego in their success

in pressuring the state to act on their behalf against the Ahmadis did seek out for

suitable targets as forecasted by the Talpurs. The history of intra-Muslim conflict in

South Asia pointed towards a renewed conflict between Shias and Sunnis, particular

the involvement of the more hard-line Deobandis except that Pakistan instead of

northern India would be the new battleground.

The success of the Deobandi led campaign to force the state to define Ahmadis as

non-Muslims came after a series of failures, as Deobandis had initially failed to stop

the creation of Pakistan. The Deobandis had previously allied with their rivals the JI

47


in order to block the 1961 Muslim family law reforms of the Ayub Khan administration

which modified Muslim inheritance and divorce laws towards gender equality (Shaikh

2009:91). Ayub Khan who was sometimes regarded as a benevolent dictator but

however regarded himself as a modernist Muslim in the mould of Sir Sayyid Amir Ali

(1849-1928) as both saw religious fundamentalism as an obstacle to individual

development and national progress. Regarding domestic politics, Ayub Khan did not

want to be pressured by anyone especially the Islamists and neo-fundamentalists to

which he had strong aversion since an early childhood experience.

Ayub’s attitude towards sharing power was so extreme that there was no one holding

the office of prime minister for more than a decade of Pakistan’s history. His reforms

of Muslim Family Law in the Ordinance of 1961, were not really anti-religious, for

instance by granting more rights for Muslim women to initiate a divorce from a

unhappy or violent marriage, the law reforms borrowed rulings from the Sunni Maliki

law prevalent in much of North Africa that were more liberal in this subject matter

than the Hanafi law which predominates Sunni law in South Asia and Hanafi law is

however considered as generally more liberal in other dimensions. Ayub like Jinnah

had done in the 1940s used Sufi networks to gain religious and political legitimacy

against the fundamentalists (Ahmed 2009:109).

In sharp contrast, such humane reforms of Muslim family law have not been applied

in India as Hindu quasi-secularists who made repeated radical changes to their own

Hindu personal law since independence but refrained from touching the internal laws

of a minority community as they feared that by doing so they might be depicted as

Hindu communalists. The fundamentalist Indian Deobandis have a long history of

generally supporting the quasi-secularist Congress since the anti-colonial struggles

of the Mahatma Gandhi era, the Congress is perceived by them as less threatening

than the Muslim modernists who dominated much of Pakistan’s early history. The

unholy alliance of the Hindu majority Indian National Congress and Deobandi Ulema

in India is perhaps due to the hostile attitude of some of the later towards modernity

in Islam rather than their actual commitment to Indian nationalism and thus their

intense opposition to the creation of Pakistan which was seen as a space where

Muslim modernists could indulge in the ‘gravest of sins` by reforming the sacred.

The Deobandis realized that targeting the Shias would be a more risky and violent

campaign as the Shia community had far greater resources than the Ahmadis as

there were many industrialists, educated professionals and landlords in the Shia

community. The Shia community was similar in size to the Deobandi community

(Jones 2002:10). Both the Deobandi and Shia communities had distinctive

advantages that the Ahmadis lacked such as having powerful Middle Eastern

patrons. The Shias are noted for having powerful feudal clans within their ranks

which the upwardly mobile Ahmadis lacked. The experience gained in defeating the

claim of the Ahmadis to call themselves Muslims, would be used as a springboard for

the much more violent forthcoming sectarian contest between these two opponents

of similar size.

Summary

The above shows that the nation building attempts of Pakistan’s elites have largely

failed to create a viable nationhood. The various Muslim communities of British India

had very individual histories and socioeconomic conditions, in some regions they

were the dominant majority, in other places, they were a subordinate majority and in

a few, they were a privileged minority. Pakistan had different meanings for each of

these communities. The founding fathers wanted to create a modernist Muslim state

by using religious identity as a form of ethnic identity but could not accommodate

such a regional diversity and the move by their successors towards containing sub-

national movements placed with more emphasis on Islam as a binding tool and the

nature of the state was transformed opening to further engagement between state,

society and religion. The expulsion of the Ahmadis from the fold of Islam meant that

the state was itself no longer a religiously neutral state.

In religious matters, it had become a player to the sectarian policies of religious

parties. As most non-Muslims left Pakistan for India, this movement of population

made internal differences within the Muslim community more noticeable. Sufis once

49


transcended religious boundaries but become a resource to offset the reformist-

revivalists whenever the secular elites needed their help. Some sections of the

Muslim population became more urbanized but the rural heritage of clan and caste

loyalty has not been displaced by class allegiances cutting across these social

categories. The lack of class consciousness makes Pakistan more prone to other

types of social conflict.

The Evolution of Sunni identity and community

Introduction

The influence of the Zia era

The military takeover in 1977 was paradoxically represented both a victory and a

defeat for the various Sunni religious parties of Pakistan. Coup leader General Zia ul

Haque (d.1988) was the son of a Deobandi cleric who was respected by the

religious parties that derived their ideological inspiration from the more legalist

interpretations (Jan, Najeeb 2010: 299). The three main Sunni parties- the two

traditional ulema parties, the Deobandi JUI, their rival Barelwis of the JUP and the

Islamist JI were all allies at the forefront of the anti Bhutto campaign which gave the

military an justification to reenter politics by displacing the PPP administration and

claiming a potentially greater national predicament had been avoided. The results of

the 1977 elections were strongly disputed, as it did not reflect popular

discontentment with the Bhutto’s rule. The official results showed that the opposition

PNA (Pakistan National Alliance), a broad based coalition of various secular and

religious parties, had won only 36 seats. In reality, the total for the PNA was probably

much larger but as the election results seen as being flawed, it is difficult to be

certain about the actual strength of the opposition to Bhutto’s rule. As the JI had won

nine of these 36 seats, so by accounting for a quarter of the PNA’s strength the JI

could have greatly influenced the future of Pakistan had if the PNA been allowed to

rule. The military by taking power had prevented the PNA with its diverse religious

components from becoming the elected civilian government of Pakistan.

Zia however increasingly co-opted the religious agenda of Bhutto‘s political

opponents, realizing that the military administration needed Islamic allies to help

govern Pakistan and as a source of political legitimacy which he had lacked, he

greatly increased the role of Islam in Pakistan by bringing in legal reforms. Islam

started to play a growing role in the national discourse that was a policy reversal of

the Ayub Khan era. The military's continued assistance to Sunni neo-fundamentalists

and Islamists helped in Pakistani state’s policy of encouraging the advance of

religious forces both within its borders and in Afghanistan (Zahid 2007: 21).

The rapid growth of madrasas belonging to various sub-sects of Sunni Islam, which

started in the later part of the Bhutto era, has been persistent. During the Bhutto era,

the growth in the number of madrasas was partly funded by Bhutto’s new allies, the

oil rich Arab monarchies who supported Muslim radicals as a counterweight against

liberals and socialists. Saudi Arabia sponsors the austere Wahhabi version of Sunni

Islam also better known in South Asia as the Ahl e Hadith sub-sect noted for being

religiously extremely exclusive. The Ahl e Hadith’s anti-Shia campaign turned

extremely violent when Shia militants countered the extremist Ahl e Hadith ulema by

a series of deadly attacks, which culminated during the Zia period with assassination

of their most outspoken leader Ehsan Zahir, who had also written polemical works

against Barelwis, Ahmadis and had later turned his attention to attacking Shi'ism.

Due to the meagre proportion of the Pakistani Sunni populace ascribing to

Wahhabism (5%), most Sunnis adhere to the two Hanafi Sunni sub-sects, the

Barelwis (70%) and Deobandis (20%) (Gugler 2010:59). Saudi Arabia had to find a

sizable anti-Shia client, so they started to patronage the Deobandis as the size of the

51


Deobandi proportion of Pakistan's population is similar to that of the Shia. So

numerically this conflict was more evenly matched. Deobandis are usually more anti-

Shia than the Barelwis. Despite some theological differences between Saudi patron

and Pakistani client this expedient arrangement was formed as the Iranian revolution

and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were seen as the primary threats in the

regional geopolitics. The Saudis were providing more charitable support for greater

Islamisation in Pakistan by emphasizing stricter Sunni Muslim identity in Pakistan,

and this time also to recruit militia who would be fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

These donations funded madrasas, and, helped generate an entire new category of

madrasas that were multipurpose where welfare, warfare and Islamic scholarship, all

imparted in varying degrees. These endeavors caused an imbalance as half of all

Sunni ulema are now Deobandi, a further 20% are Wahhabi leaving only 30% as

Barelwi which shows that Deobandis and especially the Wahhabis are

overrepresented by several times their share of the general populace but the

Barelwis are underrepresented (Mohammad 2004:224-225). So some 70% of all

Sunni ulema now ascribe to the two more dogmatic sub sects while similar

percentage of the general Sunni public belongs to the more relatively tolerant

Barelwi sub sect which represents a wide divergence between ulema and the

general Sunni population. This factor complicates religious politics in Pakistan.

The rise in the numbers of Pakistanis who worked in the various Arab Sheikhdoms

some of who were exposed to Wahhabi ideology, contributed to charitable trusts and

endowments to madrasas, Islamic parties and ulema that would direct those

finances to building a even more rigid Sunni identity (Haqqani 2006:24). The impact

of the Zia regime and state imposed Islamisation was responsible in the rapid growth

of madrasas and the resultant decline of their academic standards.

The Zia government recognized madrasa qualifications as being the equivalent of

ordinary academic qualifications if madrasas were open to particular changes to their

syllabus. The policy increased the appeal of madrasa education, and the

government willing to provide financial support and employ their graduates, many

madrasas began to look beyond training ulema to provide the Islamizing state with

its new Islamic workforce which included recruits for the army.

The Zia government had created a new educational sector the madrasas. The two

rival ulema parties the JUI and the JUP, as well as their Islamist rivals the JI, also

looked to setting up new madrasas to help them expand their following. Greater role

for madrasas in the educational system would produce a populace more inclined

towards religiosity. So notable was the impact of the madrasas that the JI, many of

its leadership had received secular higher education began to fear that they could

lose out to their ulema rivals, so to compete with them, the JI also started setting up

madrasas of their own. The Islamists who had challenged the role of madrasa based

ulema as sole guardians of the sacred law were now themselves diluting these

distinctions by entering the race for the expansion of madrasas.

By creating an environment that encourages the expansion of madrasas, the

Pakistani state and its foreign allies increased the role of the ulema in society. It had

catapulted the ulema further into the political arena and strengthened them as both a

supplementary and contradictory entity to the Pakistani state. The ulema would

remain in control of Islamic learning at a time when Islam was poised to define the

nature of government in Pakistan. The state was responsible for expanding the

Sunni ulema lobby that would help it in furthering its policies and also have a role in

combating any possible threats. The increase of madrasas, with their different

orientations increased the rivalry between sects and within sects in the race for

further state endorsement.

Since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the death of Khomeini in 1989,

Pakistan drifted away from the focus of the United States and most of its Middle

Eastern allies. The madrasas become major players in Pakistan politics as the

government and its agencies needed a new strategy towards Afghanistan and

Kashmir. The state formed relations with the upper ranking ulema. They obtained

state backing and even sometimes held important appointments. Low rank ulema

and their followers among recent madrasa graduates and students were not the

53


prime beneficiaries of the state led Islamisation. Their expectations were raised, but

never really fully fulfilled (Nasr 2000:150). When the reinstatement of democratic

politics temporarily slowed down the Islamisation due to Zia’s controversial death in

1988 allegedly involving a Shia conspiracy, the lower ulema were expected to return

to their usual roles in running the very numerous small local mosques.

Small town mosques and madrasas often serve as the bases for the younger radical

ulema that are keen to use sectarianism as a political tool of mobilization, largely

independent from the control of the senior ranking ulema and their bigger religious

parties, the subordinate ulema began to make assert their own domain of followers,

prestige and wealth. Since the junior ulema, many of whom were less inclined

towards rigorous intellectual study of theology and were more oriented towards

politics, some would not be able to become higher ulema, others were not interested

to be confined to such a narrow occupational future. For them political participation

represented an attractive outlet to influence wider society. This fracture with the

inward-looking sometimes apolitical attitude which characterizes senior ulema gave

rise to the formation of more radical organizations which lacking a wider support

base instead specialized in highlighting sectarian differences (Nasr 2000:151).

Many unemployed madrasa graduates also became involved with sectarianism in

Pakistan, often serving the political interests of larger mainstream religious even

nationalist parties. Militants began to receive support from both foreign and domestic

charitable trusts, which assisted in establishing sectarian madrasas. Law

enforcement agencies have been slow to act as they have found it extremely difficult

to combat sectarianism as the militants have been protected by the influence of other

political authorities, sometimes the militants are better armed than the police and

some probing professionals have been targeted as their investigations has been

considered too intensive and provocative (International Crisis Group 2005:23).

This degradation has altered the primary function of madrasas from educational to a

political one. A minority of madrasas has become the bases for sectarian

organizations, only 10-15% of madrasas are involved in terrorist activities including

sectarianism (Grare 2007:134). Recruitment of alienated sections of society by

madrasas provided a support base and workforce for the Islamisation of society

which also represented the disarray of progressive politics in Pakistan. Even the

military and civilian patrons of the madrasa projects had problems in manipulating

the system as the shrinking of opportunities for madrasa graduates represented new

problems for the government as the Soviet retreat and the rise of the Deobandi

madrasa educated Taliban movement in neighboring Afghanistan enhanced the ego

of many militants who now looked for new targets.

This has led the more radical of the Deobandi ulema in Pakistan to highlight the

characteristics of their interpretation of Islam and the boundaries between

themselves and alternative schools of Islam as to reinforce their power by

emphasizing the politics of identity. The dual role of madrasas as educational and

political institutions, has been acting as a grid for sectarianism, madrasas have

served the political interests of religious organizations, and helped alter their role in

their relevant communities from one that is entrenched in religious matters to another

embedded in politics. To safeguard their political domain, religious organizations

welcome financial patronage but at the same time are less keen to be controlled by

others especially the government which is seen sometimes as a political rival.

The relationship of the state with religious parties represents a complicated

relationship as there are elements of rivalry and collaboration intertwined. The

impact of the Iranian revolution which boosted the ego of many Pakistani Shia

militants and even some of their Sunni counterparts who saw the anti-Americanism,

anti-secularization of state and society as being more important to their cause than

the boundaries between Muslim sects. The federal imposition of the zakat tax

derived from the Sharia requirement that Muslims share a little of their wealth with

the poor. It was based on the Sunni Hanafi law which governs both Barelwis and

Deobandis. Shias who have their own school of law (jafari) refused to acknowledge

the Sunni based state legalization. The strength of the Iranian revolution inspired

Shia opposition to the Zia government’s plan in 1979 was so great that the

government had to retreat from this step and grant exemption to the Shias which

55


greatly unsettled Sunni extremists who saw the government’s compromise with the

Shias both as a weakness and also as the state's recognition of Shia Islam. The

Pakistani state was regarded as no longer being synonymous with just Sunni Islam.

From this point onwards some Sunni militants no longer shared with their Shia

counterparts an admiration for the Iranian revolution but drifted apart from them and

began to view the Iranian revolution as a Shia revolution rather than an Islamic one

while other Sunni radicals were always anti-Shia. (Abbas 2005:114).

Many Sunni extremists asserted that Pakistan’s Shia as a minority had no choice but

to follow the Sunni majority line as they considered the zakat exemption had

undermined Islamic universalism. The formation of the Shia Tahrik i Nifaz Fiqhi Jafari

(the Front for Defense of Jafari Law or TNFJ) to safeguard Shia interests in Pakistan

was considered as a threat to the Sunni dominance of the religious discourse partly

as there are intense internal rivalries among the Sunni Muslims especially regarding

the significance of Sufism which has led to the formation of three highly distinctive

Sunni sub-sects in South Asia, with the pro-Sufi Barelwis and anti-Sufi Wahhabis

being the polar extremes and the Deobandis taking the middle. This religious

spectrum is further complicated by the wide variance among Deobandis themselves

as some of the Deobandis are closer to their Barelwi antagonists while other

Deobandis are nearer to their Wahhabi rivals (Ingram 2011:72).

The threat to the Sunni dominance of the religious discourse became larger as the

zakat tax exemptions led to an increase in the number of Pakistani population who

wanted to be now redefined as Shias. Pakistanis who wished to allocate their

inheritance in accordance to Jafari rather Hanafi law especially as the former allowed

more gender equality and those who simply wanted to evade paying zakat tax to the

government confirmed themselves as Shias. This trend towards Shi’ism further

alienated Sunni extremists from their Shia counterparts (Behuria 2004:162). As a

consequence, anti-Shia inclinations began to manifest among Sunni extremists and

find their way into the indoctrination of the expanding networks of madrasas. The

military establishment needed the Sunni madrasas to counter the revolutionary zeal

of a younger generation of radical Shia ulema some of whom had been educated in

Iran.

Wahhabi Islam and Sufism

The internal politics of Pakistan did not function in isolation as Pakistan was a

significant lever for erecting the Sunni barrier around Iran. Saudi Arabia whose pro-

American inclinations were challenged by the Iranians had to limit Iran’s influence

among Muslims elsewhere and with its sizable Shia minority it expanded its anti-

Iranian/anti-Shia agenda to cover all the countries bordering Iran especially Pakistan

and Afghanistan (Abbas 2005:205). By enhancing a Sunni exclusive Islamic identity,

Saudi Arabia hoped to undermine any possible rapprochement between Shia and

Sunni militants which could weaken its own legitimacy which is based on upholding

what it defines as a purist or Wahhabi Islam.

Wahhabi Islam is a minority strand within Sunni Islam which considers Sufism as an

internal rival. Saudi policy has usually supported its own sect when possible

otherwise it has assisted other neo-fundamentalists and previously Islamists against

Shias and Sufi orders. The exclusion of Sufism from Islam was regarded by Wahhabi

ulema as an act of purifying Islam from foreign influences which they thought could

be anything from Greek philosophy to Buddhism and many things in between.

Wahhabis exaggerated the writings of the medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) as

anti-Sufi. While modern academic scholarship has shown that Ibn Taymiyya was not

really ant-Sufi but only desired a reform of particular Sufi doctrines and practices

(Ernst 2005:226). Wahhabis are particularly incensed by the devotional beliefs and

practices of Sufism such as the intercession of saints and the extreme reverence for

the Prophet Muhammad which they believed compromised the uniqueness of God.

Wahhabis believed that Sufism led away Muslims from the `pure faith’ and was

responsible for the decline of Muslim states and decadence in society. In varying

57


degrees, Wahhabis have inspired both Sunni neo-fundamentalists and Islamists.

Some of the later also regard Sufism as mere superstition and irrelevant to Islam

(Ernst 2005:225).

Islamists

However Sunni neo-fundamentalists and Sunni Islamists differ in their attitudes

towards Shi’ism. For Islamists, the vital matter of importance has usually been that of

religion against secularism where secularism is not defined as the separation of the

state and religion but is seen as essentially an anti-religious ideology. Islamists

prefer that an Islamic order replace the secular state, Shia- Sunni differences are of

secondary importance to Islamists.

Syed Abul Mawdudi the founding father of the Sunni dominated Islamist JI despite

coming from a major South Asian Sunni Sufi lineage; his father had left the law

profession to become a Sufi which caused adversity in his household. Mawdudi had

for most of his adult life a far more hostile attitude towards Sufism which is the

dominant strain of Islam among Sunnis in South Asia. The Barelwi ulema once had

dubbed Mawdudi as their greatest contemporary rival due to his remarks against Sufi

practices and Deobandi ulema also shared with the Barelwis their anti-Mawdudi

leanings (Jackson 2010:55). Deobandis were also critical of him as he had once

been one of them until he broke away to form his own organization which unlike the

two ulema based rivals emphasized independent reasoning (Ijtihad) which is also

emphasized by the Shia especially the ulema of Usuli school among them. Mawdudi

had been critical of senior Deobandi ulema for being politically allied to the Indian

National Congress but simultaneously he also opposed the Muslim League. Despite

most of the JI membership coming from lower middle class Muhajirs hailing from

Deobandi and Wahhabi backgrounds, the JI refrained from violence against Shias. In

the 1960s, Mawdudi had supported the Shia Fatima Jinnah in her unsuccessful

presidential bid against the Sunni Ayub Khan who had the support of most of

Pakistan’s Barelwi Sufis. Later Mawdudi attitude towards Sufism went though

considerable changes and he even returned near the end of his life to reconcile the

two aspects of Islamic religious discourse. The shift of Saudi patronage towards neo-

fundamentalists in the early 1990s made the JI financially poorer but ideologically

independent and it openly called for Muslim ecumenism as it considered that

sectarian violence was an obstacle in its agenda for an Islamic order to be imposed

on the state and then using the state as an instrument to enforce Sharia on society.

The JI’s former leader, Qazi Husain Ahmad who shares a Pashtun background with

the leaders of the two main factions of Deobandi ulema (JUI-F and JUI-S) has a

more tolerant attitude towards Muslim diversity than his predecessors. He has

played a vital role in trying to bring together all religious parties under the guise of

the Milli Yikjahati Council (Council for National Unity) so to end sectarianism and

resolve the conflicting demands of the SSP and its Shia rivals. Qazi Ahmad argued

he could achieve his goal as he claimed that the JI had within its ranks Deobandis,

Wahhabis, Barelwis and Shias.

The JI is the major Islamist organization in Pakistan but they are not the only

Islamists who seek a rapprochement with different Muslims sects. The troubled

Jhang district of Punjab is where the population in terms of sect, class and origin is

very diverse and this place is regarded as the hub of sectarian conflict in Pakistan.

Here an Islamist movement Minhajul Quran (MUQ-the method of the Quran) had

been formed in the early 1980s which later developed at the end of that decade a

political wing The Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT-Pakistan People’s Movement), a

name which stands out among religious parties as it appears to echo the type of

name associated with nationalist parties . Although PAT is rooted in the Barelwi

tradition it is not itself a Sufi order but is influenced by the Sufi ethos which is

inclusive to others including Shias and Christians (Philippon 2011:355). The

organizational structure of the JI influences PAT but both the trend that these

organizations represent in Sunni Islam are now relatively marginal in Pakistan when

compared with parties which are covertly or overtly sectarian.

59


MQM and Muhajir Politics

Earlier in Pakistan’s history, religious politics was dominated by Urdu speaking

migrants (Muhajirs) from India, who had fled the partition carnage and Punjabi

Muslims from India provided the remainder of the support base of such organizations

like the JI and JUP which both had a stronghold in Karachi. Since the emergence of

the MQM (Muhajir / later renamed Muttahida Quami Movement) in the mid-1980s,

this party which seeks to safeguard the political interests of Muhajirs, the religious

politics lost their hold on the Muhajir community.

The MQM claims that it is secular organization which has a wide membership among

all sects and sub sects. Religious politics in Pakistan have increasing started to be

dominated since the 1980s by indigenous Pakistanis, especially Pashtuns and

Punjabis rather than Muhajirs. Karachi has witnessed ethnic violence between lower

middle class Muhajirs and working class Pashtuns since the mid 1980s, Mumtaz

Ahmad ( 2003:59-60) regards this conflict as sectarian as several senior leaders of

the MQM are Shias. However Sunnis are the overwhelming majority among both

Muhajirs and Pashtuns so this conflict is not based on the Shia-Sunni divide.

However there are tensions between the MQM and the Barelwi Sunni Tehreek (ST)

despite both of them opposing growing Taliban influence among Karachi’s

substantial Pashtun minority, as the ST contains many members who were once

MQM cadres but joined ST after there were military crackdowns of the MQM in the

1990s. This is a strange political trajectory as the MQM has risen from the Muhajir

disillusionment with religious politics and which led the Muhajirs to embrace ethnic

politics. The MQM even split in two rival factions with the smaller breakaway fraction

MQM Haqiqi (`the true MQM’) having to ally itself with the Punjabi SSP support base

in Karachi in turf wars against the much more dominant MQM Altaf fraction (Nasr

2004:96).

Sipah Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Deobandi Islam

Although a series of its senior leaders were assassinated in revenge attacks by Shia

militants, Mawlana Jhangvi in 1989, Mawlana Israrul Qasimi in 1991 and Ziaul

Rahman Faruqi in 1997, the SSP has continued to wield power beyond its actual

membership size as it is heavily armed and organized and has usually been

victorious in confrontations with its main Sunni rival, Sunni Tehreek which despite

representing the much larger Barelwi sect has not been able to train militants on a

large scale probably because the Afghan and Kashmir conflicts have been almost

closed to Sufi inclined organizations as Middle Eastern patrons like Saudi Arabia

were not happy to back Barelwis and the Pakistani especially Punjabi hierarchy

despite its own Barelwi leanings has had to obey the Saudi directive as economics

has won over ideology.

The regional implications of SSP’s campaign are reflected in that it has sought to

involve Iran directly in the sectarian conflict. When Mawlana Jhangvi was

assassinated in 1989, SSP chose to retaliate by killing Iran’s cultural attaché in

Lahore as opposed to attacking a Pakistani Shia target. Again, in 1997 when a bomb

blast killed and injured several SSP leaders and members in a court house in

Lahore, the party’s response was to set Iranian cultural centers in Lahore and Multan

on fire. SSP’s actions have been directed at portraying Pakistan’s Shias as agents of

a foreign country, mobilizing Pakistan’s Sunnis against Iran, and complicating

relations between Islamabad and Tehran, all of which served Iraqi and Saudi policies

in the region. The anti-Iranian aim of Sunni sectarianism became clearer in

September 1997 when five Iranian military personnel were assassinated in

Rawalpindi. The Iranian and Pakistani governments depicted the assassination as a

deliberate attempt to sour relations between the two countries.

61


The rise of the Taliban helped the SSP as they shared the same Deobandi madrasas

and military training camps in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions. The scope

of SSP’s tactical and financial links with the Oil Sheikhdoms had expanded as these

rich states also assisted the Taliban against the Iran friendly United Front (later

renamed the Northern Alliance). Increased foreign funding for the SSP had the effect

of amplifying its inclination for more aggressive combat against Shias and internal

Sunni rivals such as Barelwi organizations. The SSP-Taliban significantly benefited

both organizations and expanding its potential role in Pakistan politics in general and

The SSP has complemented its campaign of violence against Shi’ism with a drive for

a role in provincial and national politics. The SSP has participated in national

elections since 1988, and was represented in the national and Punjab provincial

assemblies, and even in the Punjab government during the second Benazir Bhutto

administration which despite its modernist rhetoric was instrumental in getting the

Taliban into power in Afghanistan as an attempt to make Afghanistan a stable and

dependent client state of Pakistan.

Beginning in the Bhutto era, waves of Pakistani workers going to and returning from

the Oil Sheikhs. By 1983, some 5 billion dollars poured into Pakistan from Middle

Eastern remittances (Jones 2003:89-90). Population increase and wealth from the

Persian Gulf helped the towns of Punjab to expand, and also quasi-urban areas

formed near the boundaries with agricultural lands. Urbanization brought changing

patterns of authority, especially as these new urban settlements have been

dominated by Sunni middle classes and merchants who have links with the rural

economy but are not part of the agrarian political structure

The Sunni petty bourgeoisie have realized that sectarian identity is important as an

instrument in challenging privilege of Shia feudals. Merchant castes often have also

become an important source of patronage for Sunni Madrasas. The poorer and more

backward districts of southern Punjab such Jhang, Kabirwala, Muzaffargarh,

Sahiwal,, Rahim Yar Khan, and the ex-native state of Bahawalpur had experienced a

higher density of political activity by radical anti-Shia groups like the SSP and its

even more violent offshoot the Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ) (Lodhi 2011:126).

The opposition to the feudal elite was also evident in SSP’s decision to use the

assassination of Mawlana Jhangvi to mobilize public opinion against the Shia

landlords. Jhangvi was assassinated by Shia militants who shared a similar class

background and not by the Shia gentry. Eventually Iran was blamed by SSP and

Iranian institutions and Iranians in Pakistan have become victims of the SSP. Even

the 1994 bombing of the holiest shrine In Iran, the Imam Raza at Mashhad has been

blamed on the SSP. This shows that the SSP is not limited to its regional base and

has evolved to be active trans-nationally. In the 1993 elections SSP won one seat

each in the national and Punjab provincial assemblies. It then joined the Punjab

government when its member in the regional assembly, became a minister.

The SSP has preformed better in urban centers adjacent to rural areas in Punjab,

and particularly the more backward and poorer southern Punjab where Sunni middle

classes are locked in a power struggle power with the Shia gentry. The SSP has

been unable to be fully successful in rural Jhang. Its capacity to challenge the Shia

feudal hold has therefore been partial as rural Islam with its mix of Sunni, Shia and

Sufi elements has not been open to reformist or textual interpretations.

The rise in the number of Sunni madrasas especially since the 1980s has been a

focus of study for many scholars especially in the aftermath of 9/11 (Zaman 2002)

but there lacks a consensus regarding their actual number, no scholar knows how

many madrasas there actually are and so no statistical study about them has been

done here in this thesis but there is one consensus that exists regarding Sunni

madrasas in Pakistan that the vast majority of them belong to the minority Deobandi

sub sect. However the rapid increase in the number of Deobandi madrasas, and

particularly their part in Shia-Sunni sectarianism have become entangled with a

continuing and less documented religio-political contest within South Asian Sunni

Islam, which is linked to the growth of the Deobandi sub sect in Pakistan at the

expense of the Barelwis.

63


Before 1947, the major Deobandi political organization, Jamiati ulema i Hind

(Society of Indian ulema, JUH) had been an ally of the Congress party and strongly

opposed the creation of Pakistan. As a result, Deobandi ulema were not prominent

as Barelwi pirs like Sayyid Jammat Ali Shah in the Pakistan movement, and the

Deobandis have not had an easy relationship with Pakistani state until the Zia era.

Prior to partition, the minority of Deobandi ulama who were not allied to the JUH

created the Jamiati Ulama i Islam (JUI) in order to protect Deobandi interests in

Pakistan and prevent the dominance of the religious sphere by Barelwis who were

probably the most pro-Muslim League sect in Pakistan. This minority group was

headed by Mawlana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani.

The majority Deobandis, who supported of the Congress party, came to be known as

the Madani group after JUH’s supreme leader, Husain Ahmad Madani. The minority

of Deobandis who supported the Muslim League, and only wanted a limited role in its

politics, became known as the Thanvi group named after another distinguished

Deobandi scholar Ashraf Ali Thanvi. The Madanis have been more political as it

plays an essential function in their understanding of the role of Islam in society

(White 2008:28). Usmani had been close to the Thanvi group, as had many of the

important figures in the JUI in its early years. In fact, that Usmani had little

involvement in JUH owing to his distaste of the Congress party is what enabled him

to form the JUI and create a Deobandi base of support for the Pakistan movement,

and hence keep Deobandis still relevant to the new state and prevent a complete

Barelwi dominance of Sunnism (Nasr 2000:171).

It is important to note, however, that Madani had enjoyed wide support among many

Deobandi ulema and their followers in the NWFP which had been prior to partition

ruled by Madani’s political ally the Indian National Congress, they both had opposed

the creation of Pakistan. Madani Deobandis supported the Hindu dominated

Congress but they found it difficult to maintain good relations with their fellow

Muslims, the Shias (Ilahi 2007:199).

However, Madanis remained strong in Deobandi mosques and madrasas and

gradually became dominant in JUI. In fact, those Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan

that were controlled by the Madani group, such as the Binuri madrasa in Karachi

remained closely associated with Deobandi madrasas in India, and continued to

covertly follow the leadership of Madani. The Madani group eventually consolidated

its hold over of the Deobandi establishment by being much more politically active

and using Pashtun ethnicity. It had in the 1970s even entered into political alliances

with ethnic parties that governed the NWFP and Baluchistan before being dismissed

by Bhutto. This showed that neo-fundamentalists can be to a degree pragmatic as

their Islamist rivals.

The Madanis group refrained from debate regarding the Islamic constitution which

could have exposed their own opposition to Pakistan's establishment but cleverly

decided instead to highlight the role of minorities in Pakistan, turning it into a

controversial issue that would readmit them into the political sphere. The Madanis

looked to the Ahmedis in Pakistan as the thorny issue with which it could mobilize

the public and build political alliances (White 2008:27).

The Barelwis

By 1996 the rising power of SSP was complemented with the rise of the Deobandi

Taliban in Afghanistan and its allies in Kashmir, all of which caused alarm in Barelwi

ranks. One Barelwi response was the Sunni Tehreek, which was formed to counter

the Deobandi SSP by becoming involved in setting up militias which was a radical

departure from the usual Barelwi political practice which usually involved

65


disseminating apologetic and polemical literature. Intra-Sunni Sectarianism has

developed into armed rivalry between Deobandis and Barelwis for control of

mosques, especially in Punjab and Karachi (Cohen 2004:180). The Barelwis argued

that their mosques had been taken over by Deobandis especially during the Zia era

and so need to be reclaimed. If is not possible by legal means then the force of

Barelwi militancy should be used. Barelwis mourn that they despite being the largest

Sunni sub sect in Pakistan, they are a political minority and so need to be more

militant (Philippon 2011:349). The Deoband ascendancy has resulted in the political

mobilization of their rivals, the Barelwis.

The Barelwis being much more mystical in orientation differ with the Deobandis on

several major issues, one of which is their attitudes towards the Prophet

Muhammad, Barelwis believing that the Prophet has a special status with

extraordinary abilities assigned and delegated to him by God which many Deobandis

challenge these Barelwi beliefs by saying that such powers such as knowledge of

the unknown (illm ul gharib) and helping believers in need can only be attributed to

God alone. Barelwis on their part, describe all Deobandis as being really Wahhabis

at heart which is very misleading and adds further fuel to the Barelwi-Deobandi

debate (Philippon 2011:354). However Mehtab Ali Shah (2005:627) a leading

political scholar lumps Deobandis and Wahhabis together as he believes that both

are working hard towards similar political goals despite the theological differences

between them. Both Deobandis and Barelwis perceive themselves as the Ahl e

Sunnat Jammat (Society of Sunni Muslims) referring to themselves as just Sunnis

and to their opponents by using a sectarian label. So in Barelwi sectarian polemics,

Barelwi against Wahhabi is often depicted as a contest of Sunni versus Wahhabi, the

Wahhabi opponent is denied being a part of the wider Sunni tradition.

In Kyber Pakhtunwa and Pashtun areas of Baluchistan the Deobandis have never

really been challenged by Barelwis for control of religious institutions even though

the rural masses have strong Sufi beliefs. In rural Punjab where Sufi orders have to

some extent allied with themselves the Barelwi ulema, Deobandi sectarian

movements have only managed to have a degree of success where the feudals have

been Shias and the Sunni sectarianism can be seen a form of liberation theology.

Conclusion

As Sunnism is increasingly redefined in religio-political terms as anti-Shi’ism, then

those most active against the Shia, the hard-line Deobandis such as the SSP and

the pro-Taliban JUI (S) have began to magnify their profile in the Sunni religious

discourse in some areas of Pakistan. In effect, sectarianism is a means of

strengthening the power of Deobandi ulema and extending their reach into regions

where they have traditionally been sidelined by the more tolerant Barelwis. However

this has had an effect on the Barelwis as they are becoming more political and

perhaps losing some of their tolerance in the process.

The Evolution of Shia Identity and the Shia Community

Introduction

Before embarking on the subject of the evolution of the Shia community in Pakistan,

there is a strong need to first study the formation of this community and also the

development of Shi’ism both in Iran and South Asia. This piece of work has to deal

with the question why Islam was so successful in the north western regions of South

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Asia that eventually became Pakistan and why later a sizable minority of that

converted Muslim population eventually left Sunni Islam to become Shia Muslims.

Only since the event of the British Raj and with it the more elaborate system of

official census compiling, has the subject of conversion been pushed to the forefront

of scholarly debate on Islam in South Asia. The census figures gave an indication of

the relative size of religious communities, subsequent surveys helped in producing a

pattern that showed if a particular religious community was expanding and if its

growth was at the expense of another or whether a religious community was simply

expanding faster than another due to a higher natural growth rather than conversion

(Guha 2003:150).

As the relative size of religious communities had an impact on the share that it was

accorded by the colonial authorities in the political decision making process and

other opportunities such as employment and education, each religious community

wanted to safeguard or enhance its position by increasing its numbers (Guha

2003:160). These factors greatly contributed to the rise of communal politics in

Imperial India. In post colonial South Asia, the legacy of this concern with relative

community strength has given rise to militant religious nationalism in India and

Pakistan. Prior to the arrival of the British Raj, medieval chroniclers rarely discuss

conversion.

The Punjab province of Pakistan is its dominant province and it has a large Shia

Muslim minority. The history of the Punjab is extremely complex as this region has

undergone a series of political partitions and changes of administration. The Punjab

may be best described as a linguistic region where several dialects of the Punjabi

language are spoken. Pakistan inherited the western districts of the Punjab where

Muslims formed a solid majority but a large minority of the populace of the eastern

districts of the Punjab that became the Indian Punjab was also Muslim. Perhaps to

understand the phenomenon of conversion better it is useful to do a comparative

study with another region. For this reason, Uttar Pradesh which is a major part of the

Ganges plains has been selected. Uttar Pradesh is a colonial construction of the

merger of the territories of post-Mughal regional kingdoms and large feudal estates,

some of whom were once ruled by prominent Shia dynasties and clans. Uttar

Pradesh was known as the United Provinces during the British Raj and it is best

described as the heartland of South Asia where the largest number of the Hindi-

speaking population resides. In Uttar Pradesh, Muslims have been traditionally urban

and Hindus rural which is the reverse of the social composition of the Punjab.

The Punjab and Uttar Pradesh may be alongside each other geographically but

conversion to Islam has been much more successful in the former. Even within the

territory of each of these two regions, the success of Islam at winning converts

shows considerable variance. To explain why such differences occur there is need to

explore the some of theories of conversion that Richard M Eaton has developed

(Eaton 2004, Eaton 2009).

Theories of Conversion

The Immigration theory states that conversion to Islam was on an insignificant scale.

Conversion to Islam had little appeal to the Indian masses and so according to this

theory the bulk of South Asia’s Muslims are simply the descendants of people from

the Middle East and Central Asia. Before the arrival of Islam to the subcontinent,

there was migration from the Middle East and Central Asia into South Asia. So

migration into South Asia from West Asia predates Islam, besides there was much

more internal migration within South Asia. In Pakistan, the largest caste groupings

are the Jats, Rajputs, Arians and Gujars. These caste groups are descended from

Hindus as these castes are also found among Hindus and Sikhs. Most Punjabi

Muslims acknowledge that their forefathers were Hindus and those from Rajput

ancestry usually have as much pride in their high caste origins as do Hindu Rajputs.

The Rajputs being the only major high caste group in India that converted to Islam in

large numbers. Rajputs, Gujars and Jats are said to have been originally wandering

tribes that were absorbed by the caste system which had attributes of feudalism, in

this phrase, these tribes gradually evolved into agricultural castes that became

dominant in rural Punjab.

When the Turko-Afghans became the apex class of medieval India, they intermarried

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with the regional elites usually from the Rajput warrior castes so that after each

subsequent generation, the offspring became more indigenous. As South Asian

society is organized on a patriarchal basis, the offspring even after many generations

are still classified as being Pashtuns, Mughals or Sayyids (Brara1994: 2 28). The

latter being the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Sayyids had arrived with

the Turko-Afghans warriors; they often had a similar role in medieval Muslim society

as Brahmins have in Hindu society. Most pirs and many high ulema are from the

Sayyid lineage but social divisions in Muslim society are more flexible than among

Hindus. Both Shias and Sunnis are found among Sayyids. Some Shia Sayyids

refuse to acknowledge that Sunnis can also be Sayyids, while other Shia Sayyids

accept Sunni Sayyids and even intermarry with them. The denial of Sayyid status to

Sunni Sayyids by extremist Shias has been a source of tension between the two

sects. However the use of Sayyid surnames is much more common among Shias,

some Sayyid surnames such as Rizvi, Jafari, Alavi, Naqvi and Zaidi which are all

derived from the names of the twelve Imams of Shi’ism are more common among

Shias. These surnames also make Shias more easily identifiable targets for Sunni

militants. Other migrant groups in Pakistan that are predominately Shia are the

Qezalbash from Iran and the Hazara from Afghanistan.

The regions that later became Uttar Pradesh were also the heartland of Turko-

Afghan dynasties that dominated India during the medieval period. Conversion to

Islam was much less successful here than in the Punjab, especially the western

parts of the latter where Muslims gradually become a majority over several centuries.

So this paradox needs to be explained. If conversion to Islam was a result of force,

then Uttar Pradesh should have a Muslim majority population not the hinterland that

became Pakistani Punjab (Eaton 2004:15). Another paradox is that Pakistani Punjab

has the largest Shia population in South Asia (Heern 2011:5) despite that the region

has never been a part of a Shia kingdom.

Conversion to Islam and subsequently Shia Islam was more successful in what could

be termed as the peripheral zones of South Asia rather than its centers of imperial

power. Perhaps to further explore this paradox, there is a need to look at the social

structure of Uttar Pradesh. The fourfold varna system as depicted in classical studies

of caste are represented in their entirely in Uttar Pradesh. As well as being the

intellectual centre for Islam in South Asia, Uttar Pradesh has for much longer, been

the same for Hinduism. Some of most sacred sites of Hinduism including Benares

and Ayodhya both were once a part of the Shia kingdom of Awadh, are located in

Uttar Pradesh. The highest Hindu caste the priestly Brahmins are almost a tenth of

the Uttar Pradesh populace. These Brahmins represent some two fifths of all the

Brahmins of India (Hasan1989:153). So Hinduism in Uttar Pradesh has to a greater

extent been formalized and developed by Brahmins than in the Punjab. So Islam

even when it was the religion of the apex elites found it difficult to penetrate Hindu

society in Uttar Pradesh (Eaton 2004:16).

In contrast, Punjabi society is much less dominated by Brahmins who have a less

esteemed status, here the kingly or Rajput model of caste is more dominant. The

Rajputs are the representatives of the warrior caste (Kshatriyas) who rank below the

Brahmins in the Hindu ritual order. Rajputs had functioned as intermediaries between

the Turko-Afghans and the actual cultivators of the soil. After their conversion to

Islam, Rajputs in the Punjab carried on with this same role in society. Rajput identity

is not entirely focused on religion as with Brahmin identity. The conversion to Islam of

most of the Rajputs of the Punjab plains was a gradual process that lasted for

several generations as earlier historical accounts show both Muslim and Hindu first

names within certain families and later Muslim names becoming more dominant. The

conversion to Islam was imperfect as many Hindu rituals and attitudes were

inherited. The agency of Sufi Pirs was an important factor in the conversion and as

some of these religious elites intermarried with the converted Rajputs and became a

part of the rural power structure. The landed pirs of the Punjab like those of

neighboring Sindh became a special elite group as they welded both spiritual and

temporal power; the realms of Brahmin and Rajput were ironically merged into one

and held by the Sufis as the guardians of rural Islam.

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However, the Rajputs being an elite caste are a minority lineage group (biraderi)

among Punjabi Muslims. The largest biraderi among Punjabis both Muslims and

non-Muslims are the Jats (Lafrance 2004: 205-7). The Punjab Jats were even less

integrated into the Brahminical fold than Rajputs; Jats even practiced widow

remarriage, which was against Brahminical taboos. Jats aspired to the Rajput model

rather than the Brahminical model, which made their conversion to Islam more

successful in western Punjab which has been dominated by Rajput culture for a

longer period and a greater extent than eastern Punjab where more Jats later

converted from Hinduism to Sikhism rather than to Islam. Brahmins and other urban

high caste Hindus usually did not convert to Islam even in western Punjab.

Changes in Iranian Shi’ism

Late medieval Iran was occupied by Sunni Afghan Ghilzai Pathan tribes and during

and following the reign of Nadir Shah who ousted the Ghilzais from Iran, Iran was

under more turmoil than India. Nadir Shah employed the Sunni Afghan Durrani

Pashtuns the traditional rivals of the Ghilzais in his army, perhaps to create a firmer

bond between his Shia and Sunni troops, Nadir Shah sought to reform Shi’ism to

make it acceptable as a part of Sunnism which also meant making changes to

Sunnism to accommodate it. Despite having perhaps the most powerful army on the

earth at that point of history (Axworthy 2006:xv), he failed in his ecumenical

endeavors partly because both Shia and Sunni society detested such efforts by the

state. The Sunni Ottomans even preferred the return of the Shia Safawids as their

neighbors than having to face Nadir Shah who could challenge them for supremacy

within their own domain of Sunni Islam.

Many Iranians migrated to South Asia, the Qezalbash who had been elite troops to

the deposed Safawids because of their reputation as warriors were hired by regional

rulers. The Qezalbash were not as rigid as the urban Awadh Shias. In Iran the

Qezalbash were usually frowned upon by the Shia ulema for their lax observance of

religious rituals and decadent lifestyle. In the Punjab, some of the Qezalbash

became very large landholders much like the earlier Rajputs and Pashtuns and

some of their peasants became nominally Shias due to patron-client ties. Actual

power in society has been exercised more by local elites while those at the apex of

political leadership such as the ruling dynasties have a more limited influence as

they are far removed or insulated from the daily lives of the general populace.

The Qezalbash Shia community has been fleeing Iran since the seventeenth century.

It may appear quite strange at first to learn of a Shia community fleeing Shia Iran to

seek shelter in the western Sunni majority areas of India which later became

Pakistan. The reason why an Iranian Shia community fled its Shia homeland is

because Imami or Twelver Shi'ism has not a monolithic identity and deep divisions

exist under the generic label of Imami Shi'ism.

Iran was once a Sunni majority country with a Shia minority especially centered on

the shrine cities until the start of the sixteenth century when Shah Ismail Safawi

become king and vigorously made Shi'ism the state religion (Axworthy 2006:25).

What is so remarkable about this drastic change is that the Safawids were recently

themselves a Sunni Sufi order. Sharing a Turkic origin with the Sunni Ottomans, the

Safawids perhaps sought to construct a clear line of distinction between themselves

and their neighboring rivals. The Safawid Empire’s most loyal troops were the

Qezalbash. The Qezalbash were the Turcoman nomadic devotees (murids) of the

Safawids pirs. The Safawid-Qezalbash religion was largely a synthesis of Shi'ism,

Sunnism and Shamanism. The Qezalbash even believed that their Safawid master

Shah Ismail was semi-divine, a belief contrary to Islamic dogma and therefore were

termed as ghulat (extreme) or ghuluww (exaggerated) (Ahmed 2011:230). Zackery

Heern ( 2011: 25) has termed the belief system of the early Safawid period as

Qezalbash Islam while Andrew Newman ( 2009:96) describes it as Safawid Shi’ism.

Such beliefs were frowned upon by the Shia ulema. The Qezalbash were also the

warriors used by the Safawid dynasty to impose Shia religious rituals on the mostly

Sunni population of Iran. Shah Ismail's successors used less violent methods to

spread Shi'ism in Iran, but they had initially failed to enlist Shia Arab clerics settle in

Iran. Even the lure of a friendly Shia state with excellent conditions of employment

did not appeal to most Shia ulema from the Arab lands under the Sunni Ottomans as

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Shia ulema regarded the Safawids and their Qezalbash followers as being deviant

Shias (Newman 2009:38).

The Consolidation of Legalistic Shi’ism

The emergence of Iranian Shia ulema in the later Safawid era brought with it new a

major problem. There occurred a huge culture clash, as the Qezalbash followed a

rudimentary form of Shi'ism, while the Shia clergy followed a highly formalistic and

dogmatic version of Shi'ism. The military and clerical wings of the Safawid Empire

were contesting over which variant of Shi' ism should be the official religion. As Shah

Ismail’s successors such Shah Abbas feared the power of the Qezalbash more than

that of the Shia ulema, so they decided that the Qezalbash should be eventually

sidelined. The Safawid military recruitment was gradually shaped to make the

Qezalbash less significant in the army which greatly diminished their dominance.

During this troublesome period, Mullah Mohammad Baqer Majlesi (1628-1699)

attained the highest post in the Safawid religious hierarchy. Although Majlesi

increased the number of Shia ceremonial rituals, he detested Sufi practices such as

hymn singing, ecstatically dancing to music, and humming which he condemned in

his numerous works as being the remnants from the period during which Iran had a

Sunni majority (Rizvi 2010:237). Majlesi strongly believed that with the change of the

official religion, new doctrines and rituals provided that they did not contradict the

basic tenets of Islam should be formulated to achieve what he considered as the

perfect break with the Sunni past.

As well as being a religious scholar, Majlesi was also a very astute politician who

was concerned that Sufis were the direct competitors of the ulema for both state

patronage and the allegiance of the people. In order to get rid of his religious rivals,

Majlesi organized the state's resources in a zealous campaign against the influence

of popular forms of Sufism on Iran's culture and society (Abisaab 2004:128). Sufi

orders were forced to operate in secret.

However, Majlesi never intended like later and more extreme Arabian Wahhabis to

entirely banish mysticism. Probably as Shi'ism was itself partially an esoteric religion,

so instead, Majlesi was forced by this constraint to incorporate some aspects of

Sufism into the religious role of the ulema. Majlesi claimed that the 'real' mysticism of

the ulema as being unrelated and superior to the 'false' mysticism of the Sufis. On

the other hand, Majlesi may have not really believed that Sufism was incompatible

with Islam and was motivated by his political concerns. After Majlesi died, his

successors had championed the major tenet of Usuli School of Imami Shi'ism which

obliges its adherents to follow the religious guidance (taqlid) of one member of the

highest rank of clergy (marja taqlid) which shows some parallels with the pir-murid

relationship in Sufism. The Usuli sub-sect of Shi'ism is now dominant in Iran. As until

recently there was no Pakistani Shia clergyman of the rank of marja taqlid, a few

Pakistani Shias follow foreign ayatollahs sometimes Iranian ayatollahs, few of whom

are descendants of Majlesi clan. Shi' ism in Pakistan is more heterogeneous than in

Iran, as Usuli Shi’ism in Pakistan is still in the process of completely marginalizing

rival Imami sub-sects.

For Majlesi had been responsible in redefining the complex relationship between the

esoteric (batin) and exoteric (zahir) dimensions of Islam. Since the debate initially

stimulated by Majlesi focuses on if batin and zahir have an opposing or

complementary relationship and if so, is each of them equally important or is one of

them superior to the other. He had also caused a permanent split in Shia Islam by

constructing strongly defined boundaries between his own faction and those that did

not fully agree with his beliefs. So Majlesi's modified attitude towards mysticism may

had inspired to varying degrees numerous later ulema to reform and absorb certain

acceptable aspects of mysticism when it was not possible to eradicate it entirely

(Streusand 2011:166).

The profound irony about Majlesi's massive contribution to strengthening the role of

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the ulema in Iranian society and debasing the high status of the Sufis is such that it

shares some of the parallels of later reformist Sunni movements like the Deobandis

which were almost exclusively led by the ulema. The Shias and Sunnis have as a

result of Majlesi's endeavors moved more far apart as the dogmatic mindset of the

ulema both Shia and Sunni greatly magnifies the small details of the differences that

exist between them rather than emphasizing their more numerous common features.

The scope for any form of reconciliation between Shias and Sunnis was eroded. The

category of Sufism overlaps over both Shi'ism and Sunnism and this essentially

friendly interface between the two sects had the positive effect of sometimes creating

harmony by obscuring the boundaries that exist between them. Sadly, Sufism's role

been severely damaged by the ascendancy of the formalist guardians of Islamic law,

the ulema. Despite Majlesi having strongly opposed what he defined as the

extremism of the Qezalbash and the Sufi orders, he did retain the Mutazilite

inheritance of the rational sciences in Shi'ism which sets him apart from other

reformist ulema.

Apart from the Safawid order's own political abuse of Sufism in their rapid rise to

power, Sufis when being genuine mystics have usually been far less inclined towards

actually participating in any form sectarianism or hatred. If Majlesi not undermined

the role and status of Sufis, then the ulema would never have become such a highly

esteemed class in Iranian society and in doing so becoming an elite group which

could challenge other elites both religious and secular. So powerful was the force of

Majlesi's influence that he virtually became the ruler of Iran as the then Shah a weak-

willed sovereign delegated much authority to him.

The Qezalbash were branded by Majlesi as being the adherents of a highly

heterodox form of Shi'ism, as he wanted to force them to conform to his

institutionalized Shi'ism or else they would face the full might of the state's opposition

to their deviant beliefs and practices. The failure of the Qezalbash to come to any

kind of understanding with institutionalized Shi'ism made them obvious targets of

severe state prosecution.

The Impact of Shia migration to Afghanistan, India and Pakistan

The Qezalbash had to seek refugee first in neighboring Afghanistan which was not

yet exposed to sectarianism to the extent to which Iran had been. In traditional

Afghan society, the exemplary teachings of mystics contributed to forming a

relatively peaceful co-existence between communities of many different origins

(Barfield 2010:349). In Afghanistan, the ruling Durrani Pashtuns despite being

Sunnis intermarried with the Qezalbash as people of Iranian origin were regarded as

representatives of high culture. The Qezalbash and become were not the only

Iranian Shia migrants to South Asia, their historical enemies the Shia clergy including

the descendents of Majlesi and the ancestors of Khomeini had also migrated to

South Asia, especially to the Shia kingdoms of northern India, where they influenced

the local Shia population to embrace a more formalized and scriptural Shi’ism which

helped to exaggerate sectarian differences.

The breakup of British India in 1947 had a profound impact on Shi’ism and Shias in

the provinces that become Pakistan. Substantial numbers of Shias including high

ranked Shia scholars (mujtahids) from the former Shia Kingdom of Awadh entered

Pakistan as refugees. A minority of Shias had like their Sunni Deobandi rivals

opposed the creation of Pakistan and their political organization the All-India Shia

Conference had also been an ally of the Hindu dominated Congress party as they

feared that society in a Muslim dominated state like Pakistan was more prone to

elapse into intra-Muslim sectarianism as the binary divide would no longer be

between Hindus and Muslims but within the Muslim community (Ilahi 2007:

201).These mujtahids had a more rigid concept of Shi’ism than the prevalent Shi’ism

of rural Pakistan which had a more porous boundary with Sunni especially Sufi

Islam.

Most indigenous Pakistani Shias were rural peasants who had converted to Shi’ism

in the recent past during the Sikh and British administrations under the patronage of

77


Shia landlords some of whom were also Sufi Pirs (Cole 2002b:27). In pre-colonial

Sindh, there was a contest between the rival branches of the Jalali Sohrawardi Sufi

order for its premier shrine at Uch Sharif, the winning Sufis converted to Shi’ism as

the militarily powerful Shia Baluch Talpur rulers backed them on the pretext that they

switch from their sectarian affiliation (Cole 2002b:28). As other Sohrawardi Shrines in

both Sindh and the Punjab were subordinate to Uch, some of them also converted.

Thus a rural Shia Sufism exists in Pakistan which is distinct from the Shi’ism of urban

Pakistan, Iran and India. While refugee Shias were more inclined to be of urban

origin and thus more exposed to both secular and religious education and so more

conscious of Shi’ism and a more well defined and demarcated Shia identity. Thus

two major varieties of Imami Shi’ism existed alongside various Sunni sub-sects,

sharing some parallels with the differences that marked the internal diversity of Sunni

Islam in Pakistan.

Other sub-sects of Imami Shi’ism have also found a base in Pakistan after having

come into conflict with the Usulis in Iran. The Shaykhi School which is criticized by

Usuli rivals for excessively venerating the imams as it has more mystical inclinations

but the Usulis see it as being their internal Shia competitor. The Shaykhi School is a

marginal school both in and outside Pakistan. Lacking subsidies from any foreign

government Shaykhi religious institutions have been targeted for absorption by the

far more numerous and well funded Usulis who aspire for greater consolidation

within the ranks of Imami Shi’ism. However, the Haqq Nawaz Jhangvi (Speech)

depicts the doctrines derived from the `heretical’ forms of Shi’ism such as that

followed by the Qezalbash variant or the even more `heterodox’ Shaykhi School as

being those from the mainstream Usuli Shi’ism. Jhangvi could not inspire so much

support for his views if he had used Usuli Shia doctrines as a source. Most Sunnis in

Pakistan are unaware of internal doctrinal differences between Imami Shias. Most

Sunnis believe that Imami Shias are a relatively powerful community as unity exists

within their ranks while Sunnis are divided into several sub-sects. In reality the Shia

community is as much divided as the Sunni community on the basis of origins, sub-

sects and class.

The quest for domination of the entire Imami realm in Pakistan by the Usulis extends

to Iran where since the revolution increasing numbers of Pakistani Shia students are

attending the traditional religious seminary at Qom as well as the Zeynab University

in Qom. New breeds of Iranian trained ulema have emerged that have started to

displace lay preachers (zakirs) who still dominate Muharram rituals in especially

most rural areas. This move towards greater transnational links is a part of Iran’s

quest to have authority over Shias in Pakistan and elsewhere which is also a

concern to some Sunnis in Pakistan who have began to view Shias as being a part

of an international network which deemphasizes the importance of nation-state

rather like the way that extreme Hindu militant nationalists see Muslims and

Christians in India.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, these differences within Shi’ism in Pakistan

have become more profound than before as the Pakistani mujtahids have been

financed and encouraged to expand their support base by their Iranian counterparts.

The Iranian revolution helped disadvantaged groups to use religion as vehicle to

challenge government, and this made religion a form of political ideology that defined

the relationship between state and society. A major distinguishing feature of Shi’ism

in Pakistan from Iran is that there are no resident ulema of the rank of Marja- i- taqlid

(spiritual guide) in Pakistan. Some Shias in Pakistan are not aware of this basic

doctrine of the Usuli School (Pinault 2003:55).

Religious politics in Pakistan has given rise to a wide ranging array of Islamic parties

that have been sources of conflict for the state and at other times as a powerful

resource against the threats of regionalism and socialism. The Iranian Revolution

simultaneously enhanced existing anti-secular opposition to the state and its alliance

with western powers and deepened divisions within that sector in Pakistan. The

Iranian revolution has radicalized segments of the Shia community in Pakistan

especially the Shia middle class and clergy as challengers to authority at two levels

firstly at the level of the state, against biased administrations and secondary within

the Shia community as an opposition to the traditional rural landowning elite. Since

79


the 1930s the Shia feudals from the Punjab such as the various Sayyid and

Qezalbash clans have dominated the politics of their coreligionists however the Shia

middle and business classes who constitute the backbone of Shia activism in urban

areas having been influenced by revolutionary Iran now demand that the former pay

agricultural tax which has caused some discord within the ranks of the Shia

leadership. The threat of Sunni militancy has however prevented a cleavage from

developing. The revolutionary radicalism of some Pakistani Shia intellectuals

predates the events of late 1970s Iran. Shias were disproportionately represented in

left-wing parties and trade unions which mean that Shias spanned the entire political

spectrum from progressive socialists to feudal and religious conservatives. The

legacy of radical leftist activism has made Shias in Pakistan seem more open to the

revolutionary zeal of the Iranian coreligionists (Ahmed 2003:63).

Influence of the Iranian Revolution

Pakistan was progressing in the process of Islamisation when the Iranian Revolution

happened. In Pakistan Shias and Sunnis' attitude towards the revolution was initially

similar, and gradually became more divergent with time. The image of the Iranian

Revolution changed as it was originally viewed as an Islamic success against a

corrupt and westernized administration but eventually to be portrayed principally as a

Shia revolution. Pakistani religious parties admired the aims of the Iranian

Revolution, but they had a much more diverse history as they usually opposed each

other and sometimes they had been in alliance with the political mainstream which

has always been dominated by parties where religious nationalist rhetoric is more

emphasized than actual religious ideology. (White 2008:33).

In Pakistan the relatively slow pace of political change had forced religious parties to

embark on divergent paths. The Iranian Revolution succeeded while the religious

parties in Pakistan were immersed in opposition to the governing elite or co-opted as

its junior partners, their relative failure was the distinguishing theme with the Iranian

Revolution which had entirely displaced the governing elites and the other dramatic

event of the late 1970s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -where Pakistan’s support

for the Sunni Islamist later neo-fundamentalist resistance movements reinforced the

scope for a greater role of religion in Pakistan.

The revolution came to completion in 1979 the year in which Mawdudi the founder-

leader of the JI had died. Even if Mawdudi had lived to see and exchange views with

the Iranian religious elite, it seems doubtful if they could inspire him to achieve

similar success, as the JI was not so radical and not oriented towards using the

masses as a political instrument to bring changes in the structures of politics and

society (Jones 2002:6-7).

The more radical elements in the JI believed that their organization should be used

to support a revolutionary not a gradualist approach to politics. The events in Iran, for

the more radical wing of the party, highlighted the possibility of the break with the

constraints that governed the political system in Pakistan. Such a drastic change

would have requisite that JI disconnect themselves from conventional politics and

discard their links with powerful patrons.

The Iranian revolution could not bring about a similar occurrence in Pakistan partly

as Shias were a minority and not all of them aspired to radical ideals. The Iranian

revolution continued to influence debates regarding the role of religion in Pakistan,

where Islamists are divided in their ideology and have a limited popular appeal The

Soviet failure in Afghanistan has in some ways had a greater impact on Pakistan as

both Sunni and Shia activists have acquired military training that helped supply

recruits for the Afghan Jihad. The emphasis has shifted towards small heavily armed

militant groups rather than mass appeal.

Jihadi groups have tended to stem from Deobandi and Wahhabi Sunni sub-sects,

which regard Pakistan as an un-Islamic state and wish to displace the entire political

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structure with one in which fundamentalist Sunni Islam is paramount which would

lead to violent confrontation with the established order. This position has come under

fire from mainstream religious parties like the JUI, JUP and JI. These parties believe

that the Pakistani state cannot be defined as anti-Islamic or un-Islamic, and disallow

the use of violence against Muslims and Jihad against a declared Islamic state-is not

permitted. Such a conservative stance is maintained by most mainstream Sunni and

Shia fundamentalists who usually have a minor role in state and profit from its

sponsorship. They have opposed both the radicalizing influence of the Afghan Jihadi

outfits and the Iranian Revolution (Zahab & Roy 2004: 21).

The initial impact of the Iranian Revolution on Pakistani Islamism was to radicalize it.

By demonstrating that elites could be displaced and an Islamic order implemented in

their place. The Iranian revolution and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, the ongoing

Kashmir dispute with India have all contributed in increasing the role of religion in

Pakistani politics and society.

The more long-term impact of the Iranian Revolution in Pakistan was in radicalizing

Shia and Sunni identities. Shia-Sunni conflict is not new in South Asian history. It has

been a feature of social and political contests since the demise of the Mughal Empire

into regional successor states several of which had Shia rulers. From the arrival of

Shia ulema from Lucknow and especially after the Iranian Revolution the Shia-Sunni

conflict has developed in Pakistan as a more powerful issue.

Sunni Islamists initially saw the Iranian Revolution as the victory of an Islamic

movement over a secular regime and as an example to follow Sunnis focused more

on the implications of the demise of the secular state in Iran and gave scant interest

to the exclusively Shia aspects of the revolution. Pakistani Shias did however,

emphasis the Shia attributes of the revolution. This led to tensions between Shias

and Sunnis over the future course of Islamic activism in Pakistan, so that Sunnis

became increasingly aware of the Shia elements of the revolution. That awareness

led some Sunni activists to formulate positions designed to limit Iran's influence in

Pakistan and to counter the Shia mobilization that followed the revolution, Sectarian

mobilization occurred in both India and Pakistan; since then, developments in each

country have been important in the other. In India, a sizable minority of Shias have

supported the Hindu nationalist BJP as they regard Sunnis not Hindus as their

primary opponents (Varshey 2003:213). The BJP has also been eager to accept

Shias as it wants to show a more acceptable public profile and also it seeks to cause

divisions within the Muslims. Still, sectarianism has been most profound and

organized in Pakistan as Muslim sectarian parties exist there.

Shia religious revival had achieved in Iran the most spectacular Islamist victory in

modern history against a secular state. Thus, Ayatollah Khomeini had fulfilled the

goal of Islamism which was predominately a Sunni subject until then and, becoming

for a brief moment its head, Khomeini had rapidly dominated Islamic religious

discourse as he established its parameters. For a time, he had widespread appeal in

Pakistan and beyond, and was viewed as the undisputed leader of Islamic militancy

even across the sectarian divide which made the Pakistan establishment uneasy

(Nasr 2002:334). This pressed Shias to the forefront of the religious quest for power

and gave them self-belief in asserting their claims against the dominant Sunni order

(Abbas 2010:28-29). That after the revolution Iran became the front line force in

Islamist-fundamentalist politics gave Shias a sense of pride: a community that was

once worried about being declared non-Muslims like the Ahmadis now had claim to

the leadership of entire Islamic movement. So Pakistani Shias were quick to claim

the Iranian Revolution as a Shia event and one of their own.

The outcome of Iran's support for Pakistani Shias and the feeling of empowerment

that the revolution brought to that community changed the political attitudes and

mode of operation of Shias. Bold changes in Shia stance toward the Sunni

community and the state, and in the politics of the Shia community, set the phase for

the more enduring impact of the revolution.

The Iranian Revolution introduced innovative methods of sociopolitical organization

to Pakistani Shias, the revolutionary elite in Tehran was enthusiastic to export its

revolution, and, given the troubled history of religion versus the state in Pakistan's

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politics, Iran considered Pakistan as the next possible target, Iran had initially

approached the main Sunni ulema religious parties of Pakistan without success. The

Iranians had failed to realize the fragmented and complex nature of religious politics

in Pakistan.

The JI was initially impressed with the Iranian Revolution, but had not endorsed its

model of Islamist activism probably as it had failed to develop widespread appeal

among the populace. Moreover, it soon became apparent that Iran was interested in

exporting the revolution; it also planned to dominate the religious milieu in Pakistan.

The JI, saw the 1979 Islamic Revolution as an advance for religious politics and,

perhaps, as an encouragement for its own future prospects in Pakistan. However,

this did not mean that it would subordinate itself to Iran's quest to internationally

dominate Islamism (Nasr 2002:334).The JI, moreover, was unhappy Iran's attempts

to influence Pakistani domestic politics, and sided with the Zia regime when Iran

demanded certain privileges for Pakistan's Shias probably as it was financed during

this period by the Saudis.

Internal Shia Politics in Pakistan

Unable to influence Sunni Islamism in Pakistan, Iran invested more directly in the

Shia communities of Pakistan, which were more open to following Iran's model and

acceding to its domination. This led to the emergence in 1979 and subsequent

growth of the Imami Student Organization (Shia organization first formed in 197 2)

and the (TNFJ, Movement for Preservation of Jafari Law), in renamed TJP, Shia

Movement of Pakistan), in Pakistan, and the emergence among the Shias of radical

young activists, such as charismatic cleric Allama Arlf Hussaini who was Pakistani

Pashtun who received his higher religious education in Iraq allegedly a student of the

then exiled Khomeini (Zahab 2007:105). Hussaini's prominence also signaled the

growing indigenous foreign educated ulema dominance of Pakistani Shi’ism.

Hussaini had challenged the legitimacy of the Zia regime and it close ties to Saudi

Arabia. Hussaini was assassinated in 1988; it was believed that Zia’s supporters in

the military were responsible (Zahab 2007:109).

Shia organizations were inspired by the Iranian Revolution, but had roots in the

threat the Shia felt from the Zia regime and its Islamisation policies, which favored

Sunni Islam. The name of the main Shia organization, the TJP, bears testament to its

defensive nature. The TJP was formed in April 1979 with the specific aim of

protecting Shia interests in the emerging Islamic order. It was to be a pressure group

responding to General Zia's Islamisation policies. Its architect was Mufti Jafar

Hussain, a senior Shia cleric who had been appointed by General ZIa to the Council

of Islamic Ideology to safeguard Shia interests. Mufti Jafar was a moderate and was

not interested in responding with violence. Younger clerics believed that a new

militant outfit should be formed in order to counter Sunni aggression. Some 70% of

the victims of sectarian violence in Pakistan are Shias (Gugler 2011:284).

Soon after its formation the Sipah Muhammad Pakistan (SMP) became the most

heavily armed Shia organization, and it enjoyed some success in combating the

SSP. The SMP rapidly became active in countering the SSP, taking responsibility for

bombings and targeted assassinations; the SMP representing the Shia minority

usually avoided random and large scale violence as it feared the wrath of the Sunni

majority as it did not want to alienate the Barelwis and so carefully selected its

Deobandi targets known for their anti-Shi’ism. The SMP like its Sunni adversary the

SSP also became involved in criminal activities, which it used in funding its violence

against the SSP. Most of its membership came from rural or small town backgrounds

were educated at small madrasas or were dropouts from secular institutions, and like

their Sunni rivals had received military training in Afghanistan especially with Iranian

backed Hazara militias. Although it is an independent organization, it has maintained

covert ties with the TNJ the larger Shia organization, which was blamed for its failure

to protect Shias. The TNJ and SMP have parallels with the links that mainstream

Deobandi parties have with the SSP and LeJ.

In 1995, factionalism erupted in the SMP over the organization's response to the

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initiative of the Yikjahati Council (Council of National Reconciliation) that was formed

by mainstream Islamist parties to end sectarian violence. The SMP leader, Yazdani,

joined the council, but was soon after assassinated on the instructions of his more

hard-line deputy, Ghulam Raza Naqvi (Abbas 2010:38). Although the two factions of

the SMP ultimately reunited, the organization was greatly weakened by frequent SSP

attacks against its members, police infiltration, authorities who saw the SMP as a

stumbling block to ending sectarian violence, an end to Iranian support owing to

pressure from Pakistan. These factors have weakened the organization

considerably, reducing its ability to deter the SSP, but the SMP still remains a force in

Shia politics and the major Shia force in the sphere of sectarian violence

This leadership modeled itself after the Iranian revolutionary leaders, and sought to

imitate the role of the Iranian ulema in Pakistan's Shia community. By doing so, it

sought to replace the landed gentry and mainstream politicians as the leaders of the

Shia community. First, traditional community leaders -the landed gentry and Shia

politicians within the major nationalist parties had considerable resources to limit the

impact of the TNFJ and ISO.

In addition, there existed a strong source of resistance to the dominance of the

Iranian model in the person of Ayatollah Abol Qasim Khoi a senior Shia cleric who

lived in Iraq and was openly critical of the Iranian Revolution and of the role of

religion in politics, especially the elevated rank accorded to Khomeini. Khoi did not

stop the radicalization of Shias but did however help to limit Khomeini’s impact (Nasr

2006:44). Khoi enjoyed strong support across Pakistan through the network of his

students who served as ulema and community leaders thus restricted the degree of

Khomeini's influence over Pakistani Shias (Abbas 2010:29).

Conclusion

Both Shi’ism and its sectarian rival the Deoband Sunni sub sect have grown at the

expense of Sufi Islam now represented by the Barelwis. Events elsewhere in history

have influenced Pakistan. Perhaps Sunni sectarianism is an overreaction to the

threat of Shia radicalism in Pakistan. It is strange that the transformation of the Shia

community shares so many features with the transformation of the Sunni community

as both have undergone a shift towards greater internal cohesion and increasing

intolerance for internal diversity.

The Dynamics of Sectarianism in Pakistan

Introduction

Sectarian conflict in Pakistan which peaked in the 1990s becoming its prime form of

internal terrorism surpassing regional separatist violence defies the modernization

theory that societies will become more secular over time with increasing socio-

economic development and the significance of religion will correspondingly decline.

The most important political conflict in Pakistan is how the state should implement its

religious identity which encourages rivalry between different concepts of Islam and

results in sectarianism (Saeed 2007:142). Usually, Shia-Sunni sectarianism has

been reduced to doctrinal disputes or understood merely in terms of violent conflict

(Ali 2010:738). This thesis takes a departure from usual studies of sectarianism in

Pakistan in which several excellent case studies of districts prone to sectarianism

such as Jhang exist and the trajectories of the SSP have produced by several

political scientists and anthropologists, I do not want to go over what has already

have been researched intensively . According to Justin Jones ( 2011:239-241) there

are continuities between the development of sectarianism in colonial Awadh and

Pakistan that have not been given due importance so an attempt is made here to

explore this historical legacy in this chapter.

Historical legacies

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For some scholars like David Pinault (2002:38), Hasan Abbas (2010:12) and Shireen

Mirza (2007) the origin of Shia Sunni discord in South Asia can be traced even

further back to the last powerful Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (d.1707) who they

consider as an intolerant Sunni who attempted to marginalise both Hindus and Shias

regarding the previous as an external adversary of Islam and the later as an internal

threat which has strong parallels with modern Sunni sectarian discourses.

While other scholars such as Douglas Streusand (2011:296), Satish Chandra

(2006:274) and Muhammad Raza Kazimi (2008:49) hold opposing views, for them,

Aurangzeb is secular in political practice as both Shias and Hindus held senior

positions during his reign. As his empire expands by conquering Hindu and Shia

regional kingdoms, this expansion is seen as a form of religious conflict about which

popular myths relating to forceful conversion and temple demolitions were created

(Streusand 2011:252).

One possible reason for why these scholars differ so much in their portrayal of

Aurangzeb is perhaps the various academic disciplines from which they come from.

Chandra, Kazimi and Streusand are historians concerned with historical realities

while Pinault and Mirza are social anthropologists dealing more about how people

perceive history and relate to it. Hasan Abbas is a political scientist who also takes

the anti-Aurangzeb line as historical perceptions impact more than historical realities.

In the South Asian context, historical imagining has importance in modern politics, as

a militant regional Hindu party Shiv Sena literally Shivaji’s army which has governed

the large Indian state of Maharashtra glorifies Shivaji, a Maratha warrior who had

some success against Aurangzeb. Also it helps create a shared sense of trauma,

victimhood and pride in which emotions often dominate rational thought (Misra

2004:72-73) and in ethno- symbolist discourses, the creation of myths and symbols

are very important influences in community conscious but are no means the only

cause for modern hostilities. In Shi’ism there is a strong sense of opposing injustice

where the traumatic experiences of Shias are retold which is conducive to a

heightened consciousness that suffering and struggling against often superior

opposition is an integral part of Shia identity. Oppression not only implies a

distinction between Shia and Sunni, but also a specific inter group relationship (Shah

2005, Interview). What matters here is not only how Shia and Sunni differ but also

what Sunni impact is on Shia, when Sunni oppress Shia then they are the

perpetrators and the Shia are the innocent sufferers who have the right to protect

themselves. Responsibilities and moral identities are defined by construing particular

group relationships. Sunni oppressive and violent character is contrasted to Shia

virtuous nature which makes Shias vulnerable and their history of resistance is the

history of Shi’ism which helps to politicize their identity (Yildiz and Verkuyten 2011:

249-251).

The Eighteenth century witnessed the violent disintegration of the centralized Mughal

Empire; once again Shias become regional rulers. Lucknow the major city in the

Awadh region of what is now Uttar Pradesh, became the seat of Shia political power.

Throughout their history, the Shias in Awadh were a minority within a minority, as

Hindus greatly outnumbered Muslims and the Shia population was much smaller

than the Sunni. Initially almost all Shias were of Middle Eastern origin, gradually the

Shia population increased by chiefly gaining converts from the local Sunnis.

Eventually these converts from Sunni Islam outnumbered the origin Shias although a

few Hindus associated with the government service had also converted. Lucknow

had once been the foremost seat of Sunni theology in India (Robinson 2001: 23), the

situation of Sunnis being side-lined by a Shia minority as well as conversion to

Shi’ism created a sense of unease among the Sunnis. Toby Howarth ( 2005:15-17)

adds whatever the communal relations between Muslims and Hindus, where Shias

were powerful, there was sectarian unrest.

The Lucknow Nawabs had accommodated Sunnis and Hindus in their state

hierarchy. When the British displaced the Nawabs after the violent events of 1857,

the Shia population lost its secular apex leaders, and the position of the Shia ulema

was enhanced, they were contesting the leadership of the Shia community with the

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Shia landed elite. While some Shia landlords were well known for being decadent

and many of them intermarried with Sunnis and even Hindus and Europeans, the

Shia ulema sought to reform both Shia religion and society on more narrow lines.

During this period Shia ulema's position in society was also enhanced by their

acceptance of Usuli Shi'ism which was displacing rival forms of Imami Shi'ism in

Iran, this enabled them to give legal opinions (fatwas) regarding social matters that

the more restrained Akhbari prevalent during the Nawabi period did not permit

(Momen 2003:317-318). Usuli ulema discouraged Shia Sunni intermarriages which

they considered unacceptable for religious reasons and since the 1980s in Pakistan

sectarian Sunnis similarly regard inter-sectarian marriages as invalid marriages.

Some extremist Shia ulema in Awadh like Sectarian Sunnis in Pakistan went so far

as to question if Muslims of other sects should be regarded as Muslims (Cole 200

-2:84).

Another venue for contesting between sects was shared religious space. Shias

especially Shia women often visited Sufi Shrines, Shia ulema now forbid them from

doing so as they now regarded Sufi Shrines as specifically Sunni institutions. Sunnis

and Hindus also took part in Muharram rituals although they were usually not as

deeply immersed in it to the extent of Shias. Shias now practiced tabarra a ritual in

which they cursed the first three caliphs of Islam as usurpers which greatly offended

Sunni sensitivity, while the Sunnis responded by a counter ritual Madhe-sahaba in

which their achievements were celebrated, this occurrence of simultaneous opposing

public rituals resulted in violence. Soon Sunnis did their separate Muharram from

Shias, later some Sunnis went further by no longer having Muharram rituals (Ilahi

2007:188). Muharram was now no longer a shared experience between Shias and

Sunnis, Hindus and Muslims. Muharram became associated specifically with Shias.

Reform movements among Hindus such as the militant Arya Samaj and Sikh

reformers also discouraged their followers from participating in religious rituals of

other communities (Purewal&Kalra 2010:385). Muharram gradually become an

almost exclusively Shia dominated ritual. Each community whether Hindu, Shia or

Sunni became increasing occupied with eliminating accretions and syncretism,

moving towards what they defined as a purer culture and belief system consequently

establishing a more unambiguous identity. Thus religious reform had encouraged the

hardening of identities (Hasan1996:547).

Uttar Pradesh as well as being the centre of Shi’ism in India is also the home of

several Sunni Muslim reformist establishments while neighbouring Bihar which has a

similar linguistic, religious and caste composition has never experienced intra-

Muslim violence partly as it has under stronger Sufi influence which helped

transcend Shia-Sunni differences and was relatively free from large reformist

sectarian institutions that dominated Uttar Pradesh (Hasan 2007:7). Most Bihari

Muslims are Sufi Sunnis wedded to local shrines but their political leadership during

the late colonial period was largely led by Shia barristers. Shia Bihari barristers such

Sir Ali Imam, his younger brother Hasan Imam and Sir Sultan Ahmed were

considered among the very best lawyers in British India (Hasan 2007:49). Unlike

Uttar Pradesh, Shia-Sunni intermarriages were numerous and socially acceptable.

All these factors encouraged good sectarian relations in Bihar.

Awadh has experienced more Muslim sectarianism than even Hindu-Muslim

communalism. Major Shia-Sunni riots erupted between 1905 and 1909 and again

between 1935 and 194 2. The initial dates are significant as the Muslim League was

formed in 1906 and some of its founding leaders were prominent Shia lawyers and

landlords such as the Sir Ali Imam and the Raja of Mahmudabad, the largest Muslim

landlord in Awadh, but both of these Shia notables had Sunni relatives which may

have helped them to attain and maintain their substantial political influence. While

the Shia ulema remained largely aloof from national politics. In this period, debates

regarding separate and joint electorates for Hindus and Muslims divided the Muslim

League rather than sectarian affiliation but Shias in Awadh saw the League as

principally a Sunni dominated organisation. The later dates are also important as the

1935 India Act provided more power to local and regional bodies, after the 1940

Lahore Resolution, the competition between the League and the Congress became

more intense. Ashutosh Varshney (2003:173) states that class tensions were

responsible to a large extent for sectarianism as he describes the Sunnis as mostly

poor artisans or peasants and only later did a middle class develop among them who

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challenged the Shia landed elites which appears to have parallels with the situation

in certain parts of present day Pakistan. On the other hand, Mushirul Hasan

(1996:547) says that apart from the Shia segment of the landed gentry at the apex of

society, Shias were much more socio-economically backward than their Sunni

brethren; they had fewer counterparts in the modern professions but had a few

outstanding barristers such as the Islamic modernist author Syed Amir Ali (1849-19

28), and were even weaker in industry and trading. This shows that the socio-

economic picture was much more complex in Awadh and so likewise over-

simplifications should not be applied to modern Pakistan where apart from a few

places Shias are economically behind Sunnis (Nasr 2002b:333). Large numbers of

Deobandi inspired activists known as Ahraris went to Awadh from the eastern part of

the Punjab, to court arrest in protests against Shias. In most of eastern Punjab

during the Sikh Raj (1799-1849), large Muslim Rajput landlords were displaced by

lower ranking Jats so small landholding became much more common and society

much more egalitarian than in western Punjab (Robinson 1988:57). This

transformation in the socio-economic order broke hereditary patron-client ties and

made the population more open to religious reform movements and some later

migrated to small towns. The lower middle echelon of the Muslim population

especially the skilled artisans and small traders of Amritsar, Lahore and Sialkot

provided most of the Deobandi constituency. Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founding head

of the Sipah Sahaba had acknowledged the sectarian legacy of the Ahraris (Kamran

2005:36). In Pakistan most of the Sipah Sahaba’s support base is composed of

descendants of east Punjabi refugees from 1947 (Lieven 2011:274).

The speeches of the Sipah Sahaba, include anti-Shia fatwas which can be attributed

to a leading Deobandi scholar of Lucknow. In 1984, Muhammad Manzoor Nomani

wrote polemical publication against Imam Khomeini and Iran` Irani Inqilab: Imam

Khumayni awr Shi’iyyat.’ (The Iranian Revolution: Imam Khomeini and Politics). It has

become the gospel for Deobandi anti-Shia organisations (Kamran 2009:10).

Funded by the Saudi backed World Islamic League, Nomani wrote to the Deobandi

seminaries of India and Pakistan, as to undermine the wider appeal of the Iranian

revolution to Sunnis. (Ahmed 2011:93-94). Nomani strongly emphasised the aspects

of Shi’ism which Sunnis especially detested. In particular, the concept of Imamate

and its parallels with the Christian doctrine of Atonement, which according to Nomani

deviated far too much from what could be tolerable in Islam as the Shia Imams ‘s

intercession infringes on powers belonging to exclusively to God (Pinault 1999: 292-

293). The preface of Nomani’s work was written by Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi,

rector of the Nadwatul Ulema, ironically Nadwatul Ulema was an Islamic seminary

which had been founded during the British Raj to transcend Sectarian affiliations and

bring all Muslims together (Sanyal 2005:39). Dwindling financial resources had made

Nadwatul Ulema seek new sponsors and Saudi Arabia at the height of the Iran-Iraq

War felt it politically expedient to support Islamic institutions globally in order to

disseminate anti-Iranian propaganda. One pro-Saudi scholar in Pakistan, Asar

Ahmed even went beyond Nomani and Nadvi in demonising Shi’ism as the

threatening other, by defining Shi’ism as a Jewish conspiracy inside the body of

Islam (Haqqani 2006:86).

The Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) the subsidiary organisation of the JUI specially

devoted to the task of challenging Shi’ism as a religious ideology, fighting Shias as a

community and also helping to isolate Shia Iran from Pakistan. The main aim of the

SSP is to have the Shia sect to be excluded from the fold of Islam by the state as it

defines Shias as being more dangerous to (its) Islam than non-Muslim communities,

as the latter are considered by the SSP as external threats while Shi’ism is regarded

as the far more dangerous threat as it is the internal enemy which presents itself as

not only as a part of Islam but also as the more authentic version of Islam. A senior

SSP leader Maulana Ziaur Rehman Farooqi in one of his speeches says a Sikh is a

kafir (infidel) likewise a Jew, a Hindu are also infidels yet all of these different types

of infidels have the decency to be what they are and are not posing as Muslims while

Shias prays and fasts like us and even claims that that they are Muslim so in reality

Shias are the worst type of Kafir. Traditionally, Sunni attacks on Shias largely

involved harassment and discrimination but the SSP made sectarianism manifests

itself at an extreme level where violence dominates (Ahmed 2011:115).

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The SSP was created during the Zia period along with other groups prone to

violence such as the MQM, which may be attributed to the military regime’s desire to

exploit ethnic and sectarian cleavages in Pakistani society for its own purpose of

survival against its chief opponent the PPP while the MQM and SSP have some of

the most powerful militias in Pakistan they are political parties with very different

agendas. The MQM representing largely Urdu Speaking migrants from northern

India and their descendants are predominantly based in urban Sindh and could

provide opposition to the PPP whose support base are the indigenous Sindhis. The

MQM portrays itself as a non-sectarian organisation that includes all of Pakistan

major sects and sub-sects. While the SSP targeted Shias who tended to support the

PPP. Some members of the SSP’s militia broke off to form the even more violent

Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) but have maintained links with the parent organisation

despite the SSP claims that it is a political party not a terrorist organisation. So the

LJ is an auxiliary of the SSP which is itself a subsidiary of the Deobandi Jamiat

Ulema –i-Islam (JUI). JUI also split into various factions with each claiming to be the

authentic JUI, the two major factions of the JUI being JUI-F (Fazlur Rahman) and

JUI-S (Samiul Haq). In a monthly publication of the JUI-S, just three months prior to

Zia’s Islamisation, there was an anti-Shia article in Al-Haq, Vol.14, no.3 (December

1978, pp. 26- 27) which contained the following:-“The Shias are controlling the entire

Sunni auqaf (religious endowments). There are five Shia cabinet ministers in the

(central) government. The Shias are also controlling the key positions in the (civil

and military) services and are in majority (in these services). This is despite the fact

that they are hardly two percent of the total population of Pakistan…We must also

remember that the Shias consider it their religious duty to harm and eliminate the

Ahle-Sunna…The Shias have always conspired to convert Pakistan into a Shia state

since the very inception of this country. They have been trying very hard toward that

end and have been conspiring with our foreign enemies and with the Jews. It was

through such conspiracies that Shias masterminded the separation of East Pakistan

and thus satiated their thirst for the blood of the Sunnis.” (Ahmad 1998:109).

Although not a formal member of the SSP, the above shows that Samiul Haq does

have exceptionally negative views about the role of Shi’ism in Pakistan. When

interviewed by the American journalist Hannah Bloch (Time Magazine [Asia Edn.] 08

March 2001), he denied that his organization was responsible in disseminating anti-

Western and anti-Shia propaganda. Instead, Samiul Haq like some political scientists

blamed fragile government institutions and socio-economic stagnation as the main

causes for sectarianism. Yet evidence exists which links his organisation with the

SSP as for instance the JUI supported a strike called by the SSP (The Newsline

International .16 September 1998).

Samiul Haq is also the rector of the famous Madrasa called Jamiah Darul Uloom

Haqqania at Akora Khattak in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It is the madrasa where many of

the Taliban leadership including its head Mulla Omar received their education. So

Pakistan not Afghanistan is the true origin of the Taliban movement. This probably

accounts why the Taliban which shares much of the extremist Deobandi ideology of

the JUI-S, SSP and the LJ and also shares their anti-Shia position. When the Taliban

took over in Kabul, its military success was celebrated by Pakistani Deobandis.

Some Deobandis openly demanded a similar fundamentalist takeover in Pakistan

(Mirza,Muhammad. Friday Times 16- 22 February 1995). The Deobandi movement

first became widespread in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa since the 1920s as it took

advantage of two prevalent themes, first it shared a robust anti-colonial stance allied

to the Congress party and also utilized the reformed Sufi networks of the

Naqshbandi order already established in that region (Haroon 2008:48).

Prior to the split of JUI into its JUI-F and JUI-S fractions, the JUI was headed by

Maulana Mufti Mahmud. Mahmud the father of Fazlur Rahman contained the anti-

Shia bias of the JUI as he was in Deobandi terms a pragmatic individual who

became the chief minister of the NWFP in alliance with the Awami National Party

(ANP) a secular Pashtun ethnic party. Maulana Mufti Mahmud’s death opened

divisions in the JUI with the majority following his son. Both the JUI-F membership at

lower levels and its smaller rival the JUI-S produce anti-Shia rhetoric, as both

compete with each other as to which group is more militantly anti-Shia and so

demonstrating a stronger claim to their Deobandi inheritance. However in the case of

JUI-F, this anti-Shia posture had limitations as its chief Fazlur Rahman’s home

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district and political base, Dera Ismail Khan contains a significant Shia minority which

he did not want to antagonise (Zahab 2004:142) possibly due to his political

ambitions which spanned beyond the narrow issue of sectarianism. So the SSP is

more allied to the JUI-S then it is with the JUI-F but it seeks assistance from both

and the Taliban plus other Pakistani militant groups associated with the Kashmir

conflict particularly fellow Deobandi groups like Jaish Muhammad (JM) as well as

the supposedly apolitical transnational preaching group Tablighi Jamaat. Multiple

memberships of Deobandi organisations is common, militants can be protected by

switching their membership when one particular Deobandi organisation is threatened

by a state ban. A larger organisation can have an open political front but covertly

sponsor terrorist activities in the shape of a allegedly breakaway group without

openly endorsing violence thus presenting an acceptable public profile (Ahmed

2011:122).

Like in the way Hindu Nationalist organisations view the Muslim minority in India,

Deobandis see Shias as a threatening other who have opposing traditions,

aspirations and allegiances from the Sunni community. Deobandis define Islam as

just a Sunni entity which excludes Shias and others much in the same manner as

Hindu militants define Indian as just a Hindu entity excluding Muslims and Christians

but including Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains as the three later have their historical roots

in Hinduism. Just as Hindu extremists desire Indian society to undergo Sanskritizing

in order to be perfectly Hindu reducing what is considered alien influences; Sunni

extremists want Pakistani society to Shariatize to be more authentically Islamic. The

Sunni extremist fear of the conversion of Sunni peasants to Shi’ism in areas of

Pakistan under Shia landlords is similar to Hindu extremists worries of low caste

Hindus converting to Christianity and Islam. So the Hindu communal discourse

shares numerous parallels with the Sunni sectarian discourse.

The Influence of the Middle East and Central Asia on

Sectarian politics in Pakistan

The successful rise of the SSP’S close Afghan ally, their fellow Deobandis, the

Taliban movement had however drastically increased sectarian violence in Pakistan

and Afghanistan. While in power for a relatively short period, during Taliban rule in

Afghanistan, sectarianism peaked in Pakistan (Ahmed 2012:98). By providing

military training camps and sanctuary to Pakistani Sunni militants in Afghanistan, the

Taliban also used them in massacres against the Afghan Shia minority (Grare

2007:138). Iran being a strongly ideological nation-state fulfilled its religious and

political obligations by trying to protect the rights of Shia communities beyond its own

borders. Iran had a long history of maintaining influential contacts with Shias in

Afghanistan and Pakistan, during the 1990s there was increasing tensions between

Iran and its eastern neighbours on the sectarian issue (Abbas 2010:39). During the

Afghan civil war, the nexus of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States due to a

desire to curb both Soviet and Iranian influence supported many fundamentalist

Sunni militias-parties collectively known as the Mujahedeen in their successful

struggle against the Soviet-backed Afghan Communist regime (Roy 2004:141).

Some of these Sunni fundamentalists in Afghanistan such as the Pashtun dominated

Hezb-i-lslami (Islamic Party) had vehement anti-Iranian views partly as their rivals

were the Dari speaking Tajiks although Tajiks are also usually Sunnis their language

creates bonds with Shia Iran as Dari is regarded as a variant of Farsi (Murphy&Malik

2009: 27). The Tajik dominated Afghan Jamiat-i-lslami like its Pakistani namesake

shared much of its Islamist ideology. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the leader of Hezb-i-

Islami had received a secular education like many in Islamist parties (Jones 2008:

27). Both the Tajik majority Jamiat-i-Islami and the Pashtun dominated Hezb-i-lslami

Mujahedeen parties claimed to adhere to the teaching of the Pakistani Jamiat-i-

lslami founder-leader Maududi (Haqqani 2005a:17) but bitter ethnic rivalries

between Afghanistan two major ethnic groups overrode ideological concerns and led

to political instability and massive bloodshed (Akhtar 2008:54).

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Iran was also enthusiastically opposed to the Kabul Communists and began to

staunchly back traditional Shia guerrilla organizations such as the Hezb-i-Wahdat

( Party), Harakat-i-lslami (Islamic Movement), Shura-i-lnqilab-i-luefaq-i-lslami

Afghanistan (Revolutionary Council of the Islamic Union of Afghanistan) but then

switched most of its support to the radical Khomeinist Sazman-i-nasr-islam-yi

Afghanistan (Islamic Victory Organization of Afghanistan) providing it with military

training camps in Iran.

Pakistani Shia radicals especially from the lower middle class families of the small

towns in the Punjab also volunteered to join the Afghan Shia Mujahedeen bodies in

their struggle against the Soviet-backed Communists and Sunni fundamentalists.

Both Pakistani Sunni and Shia militants had gained intensive combat experience in

Afghanistan which made the sectarian conflict in Pakistan extremely violence (Grare

2007:140).

Three Sunni Sufi Mujahedeen organizations collectively known as Moderates had

participated in the Afghan Jihad. These three were Maulavi Muhammad Nabi

Mohammadi’s Harakat-i-lnqilabi Islami (lslamic Revolutionary Movement), Pir

Professor Sibghatullah Mojaddidi’s Jebha-i-Milli Nejat (National Liberation Front)

and Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani’s Mahaz-i-Milli Islami-yi Afghanistan (National Islamic

Front of Afghanistan). As all three above strongly supported the restoration of

monarchy in Afghanistan and the traditional social order, so they were also known as

Traditionalists. (Hussain 2005:103). Some leaders of these traditionalist parties

belonged to Sufi clans, which intermarried with the ex-Afghan royalty. The Saudi

monarchy with its Wahhabi origins was naturally very reluctant in supporting the

traditional Mujahedeen parties. Gradually Pakistani support to these Afghan

traditionalists withered away as Pakistan was under pressure from the Saudis (Zaidi

2010:147). Iran had failed to realize that by failing to support these Sufi leaders, Iran

had lost its chance to gain a friendly foothold in Sunni majority Afghanistan. Iran had

focused too narrowly on supporting just Shia organisations.

As the names of all these Afghan Mujahedeen organizations both Sunni and Shia

suggest, they all had competing interpretations of the Islamic tradition. These

divisions were not simply based on those between Sunnis and Shia but also those

within each of these sects, each Mujahedeen party represented different sub-sects

as well as opposing sectors of tribal society and different foreign sponsors (Barfield

2004:283-285).

The powerful nexus of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States initially

supported the Islamist Afghan Jamiat-i-lslami Mujahedeen as its leader Professor

Burhanuddin Rabbani had during his postgraduate studies aboard developed close

ties with its Pakistani namesake organization and various Saudi funded factions of

the Muslim Brotherhood which dominates the Islamist discourse in the Arab world.

However, Saudi Arabia and the United States because of their extremely hostile

relationship with Iran quickly decided to switch their support to Hezb-i-lslami which

because of its Pashtun support base was more opposed to Iran. Another reason why

Rabbani’s Jamiat-i-lslami was abandoned by Saudi Arabia and the United States,

was that it is considered as principally being a party composed of the Tajiks, who are

the second largest ethnic group after the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and also it was

considered unlikely that being less than 30% of the country’s population they could

successfully dominate Afghanistan (Cole 2009:242).

In addition, the Tajiks have maintained close cultural and linguistic ties with Iran and

Tajikistan, which partly explains why Tajiks usually avoided joining the Hezb-i-lslami

and that some two million Sunni Tajik refugees from the Afghan conflict decided to

seek shelter in Shia majority Iran rather than Sunni majority Pakistan.

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The Hezb-i-lslami drew most of its local support from the Pashtuns who are mainly

Sunnis, the largest single ethnic group in Afghanistan and they also live in large

numbers in Pakistan’s frontier regions that neighbour both Afghanistan and Iran.

Given that Saudi Arabia and the United States have far better resources at their

disposal than Iran, Pakistan decided to fully follow their direction and virtually

abandon its long-standing rapport with Iran which dated back to the time of the late

Shah.

While in Afghanistan, the long history of ethnic rivalry has been mainly between two

opponents the Pashtuns and the Tajiks. Pakistan has so far successfully derailed the

ambitions of its Pashtun separatists by integrating Pashtuns in very large numbers

into civil and military hierarchy. So after the dominant Punjabi majority, Pashtuns are

regarded as the most powerful community in the Pakistan, as both are well

represented in military arguably the most influential institution in Pakistan, as much

as 34% of the top military elites are Pashtuns (Hussain 2005:106) which is about

twice the Pashtun share of Pakistan’s population (Mushtaq 2009:281) giving a ratio

in the region of 2:1. The Punjabi Shares of the military high officer class and the

general population are approximately equivalent.

Yet the Pashtun elites feel that their position in Pakistan is under threat from the

claims of other sub-nationalities especially those who are under represented such as

the Baluchs, Sindhis and Muhajirs, so they wanted to safeguard and even expand

their constituency by extending their influence deep into Afghanistan. So by

combining religious ideology with tribal ethnicity, the Pashtun elites in the Pakistani

government, military and its intelligence services wanted to create a powerful

political force in the shape of the Taliban which would be their client (Qassem

2007:72). To some extent Pashtun ethnicity had been Deobandized (Jan,

Muhammad 2010:186).

This powerful Pashtun connection, allows Pakistan to be a major player in the

internal politics of the Afghan state. As Pakistan is geographically a narrow country it

lacks the strategic depth required in a potential conflict with its much larger and far

more powerful neighbour Indian so a friendly and if possible an Afghanistan entirety

dependent on Pakistan for its own survival is an essential part of Pakistan’s foreign

policy (Mir 2006:30). Successive governments in Afghanistan from the Durrani

dynasty to the Communists have traditionally provided support to Pakistan’s Pashtun

separatist parties and simultaneously maintained friendly relations with Pakistan’s

archival India. The close association of Pashtun ethnic nationalism with secularism

and good Indo-Afghan relations had been prime reasons that encouraged Pakistan

to enthusiastically support the installing of a fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan,

regardless of the wishes of the Afghan people. This political ambition of Pakistan to

determine the internal affairs of Afghanistan coincided with the foreign policy of the

world’s most powerful financial sponsor of international Islamic fundamentalism, the

Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Abbas 2005:205).

Saudi Arabia is the main bastion and promoter of an austere version of Sunni Islam

which known as Wahhabism. This fundamentalist ideology has little tolerance

towards Islamic philosophy and mysticism. The Saudis vehemently oppose Sufism

and Shi’ism as Wahhabism discourages the study of rational and esoteric religious

sciences (Zaidi 2010:146).

In an act of sacrilege, the 1801 demolition of third Shia Imam Hussein’s tomb by

Saudi Wahhabis created a longstanding and intense enmity between Wahhabis and

Shias that has impacted on Saudi Arabia-Iran relations. The Saudi Arabian

government until recently only tolerated the existence of Wahhabism as the only

legitimate form of Islam.

While Shi’ism has become due to extremely heavy state sanctioned prosecution a

totally clandestine movement in Saudi Arabia for most of its history, they are a vocal

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minority as they said to be in majority in the major oil producing Eastern Province.

Saudi Shias have experienced the absolute degree of indignity when being

described as the worst kind of polytheists by the state funded Wahhabi clergy who

have even demanded on various occasions that the Shia minority be ‘converted’

back to Islam. So Saudi Arabia is a country with a much longer, far more intensely

violent history of widespread anti-Shi’ism than Pakistan.

Despite having suffered intense discrimination and perhaps as a strong reaction to it,

Shias have emerged from it to become the most educated community and the most

highly skilled workforce in Saudi Arabian society so this important factor together

with their large numerical presence in the sensitive Eastern Province makes the

Saudi Royal elite feel extremely uneasy (Cole 200 2:178). The Pakistani journalist

Khaled Ahmed (2011:223) adds that the Iranian revolution acted as a powerful

catalyst in crystallizing Saudi fears regarding the Shia threat both from within and

outside the Arabian Peninsula- As Afghanistan and Pakistan both have fragile

political economies and highly fragmented societies, they appear to be the ideal

targets for the further expansion of Saudi funded Wahhabi ideology. Shireen Burki

(2011:158,162) adds that the Saudis targeted Afghanistan and Pakistan especially

as Sufism is well entrenched in these two countries. In Afghanistan, the Shia minority

has a similar percentage proportion of the total Muslim population as Pakistan (Cole

2009:242).

However, the Afghan Shias have suffered in their troubled history more prolonged

and intense prosecution than what their Pakistani counterparts have experienced. So

the Hazaras took advantage of the Shia concept of dissimulation (taqiya) which

permits Shias to conceal their identity when they faced with a hostile situation,

sometimes even claiming they were Sunni Turkmans,Tajiks or Uzbeks (Schetter

2005:66).

During the second half of the nineteenth century, some Hazaras had no choice but to

flee from the high levels of sectarian and racial violence prevalent in Afghanistan into

the safer territories of Iran, Russia or British India especially Baluchistan. Shah

(1997:94) argues that while the Baluch are a largely Sunni people, they seldom

exhibit any of the fanatical tendencies associated with some of the Pashtun

tribesmen who inhibit the same area. Sometimes the Baluchs even intermarried with

the Hazara despite their sectarian differences. In an environment relatively free from

discrimination, the Hazaras reached their full potential (Mousavi 1998:147). The

Hazaras in Pakistan can be found in the higher levels of both the civil and military

state structures. In Pakistan, despite being an Islamic state, where society is very

caste conscious, the Mongoloid appearance of the Hazaras his been depicted as a

proof of the Hazara community’s descent from the Mongol Emperor Chenghiz Khan’s

army, thus providing the Hazaras with a high social status. During the early 1990s,

General Musa the son of a Hazara refugee from central Afghanistan was even

appointed as even appointed as the governor of his adopted homeland of Pakistan’s

Baluchistan province.

So this shows that Pakistan’s sectarian violence is of a rather recent origin. Why the

Baluch are not prone to sectarianism to the extent of other Pakistanis is probably

due to the following factors. In Baluchistan the Shias are a tiny minority and mostly

from the minor Talpur tribe of the Baluch, they were considered as being not a

substantial threat to the socio-economic interests of the Sunni elite as most have

migrated to the province of Sindh, where they due to their superior organizational

and fighting skills became the rulers Sindh. The influx of Shia Hazaras refugees from

Afghanistan did not dramatically challenge the sectarian or ethnic balance of the

region.

In Baluchistan, the major divide is centred between that of the Baluch and the

Pashtun both of whom are largely Sunnis. The Baluch and the Hazara refugees

shared a history where each of them had experienced hostile relations with

Pashtuns. In the aftermath, of the Taliban’s demise, Hazaras in Baluchistan were

targeted by local pro-Taliban Pashtuns, as Afghan Hazaras had helped the anti-

Taliban Northern Alliance (Shah 2005:622). Thus Hazaras were again exposed to

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sectarian and ethnic violence in their new homeland of Pakistan.

However, some Baluch resent what they see as the Hazara community’s fondness to

retain their Dari language rejection of the Baluch culture and covert allegiance to Iran

(Shah 1997:112). This resentment seldom ever erupts into actual violence between

the Baluch and the Hazaras. The SSP has only two small centres in Baluchistan,

compared with some twenty eight larger centres in the Punjab. Even when taking

into account the much larger population of the Punjab and its much higher population

density, this supports the popular view that most of Baluchistan is relatively isolated

from the problem of sectarianism (Nojumi 2002:120).

Any violence towards the Hazaras which occurs mainly during the Muslim holy

month of Muharram which is especially sacred for Shias is largely attributed to the

Pashtuns. Some of Whom in Baluchistan have recently started to assert their strong

Sunni sectarian identity due to the Pashtun dominated Taliban in nearby Afghanistan.

So the Shia Hazaras even now in their new homeland of Pakistan’s Baluchistan

province have not entirely escaped from the hostility of Sunni fundamentalist

Pashtuns. The Baluch tribes are themselves sidelined in the Iran where they are a

Sunni minority and some Pakistani Baluch have expressed strong sympathy for their

fellow Baluch in Iran, but as they don’t view the Baluch problem on just sectarian

lines, so this Baluch-Iranian divide does not detrimentally impact on the Baluch-

Hazara relations in Pakistan. Thus during much of the period under study, the Shia-

Sunni divide is of a much lesser importance in Baluchistan than it is elsewhere in

Pakistan.

The Hazaras are not the only Shia refugee community in Pakistan that have a

Central Asian or Middle Eastern origin. The Qezalbash Shia community have been

fleeing are since the seventeenth century. It may appear quite strange at first to learn

of a Shia community fleeing Shia Iran to seek shelter in the western Sunni majority

areas of India which have later became the state of Pakistan. The reason why an

Iranian Shia community flees its Shia homeland is because Imami or Twelver Shi’ism

is itself not a monolithic identity. Several major strands of Shia schools of thought

exist under the generic libel of Imami Shi’ism.

Sectarian Relations, 1992- 2002.

In 1992 the Communist regime in Afghanistan was replaced by an Islamist

government. Large numbers of militants returned to Pakistan, some joined sectarian

groups which increased the levels of sectarian violence in Pakistan (Haleem

2005:124). The Afghanistan Jihad had been used by Muslim states also as a means

of `dumping’ thousands of Islamic radicals who could be a potential security threat

within their own countries, now many that survived were back home (Haleem

2005:125). The JI despite being a partner of the ruling pro-Allied Coalition PML had

supported Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War which resulted in it losing Saudi

financial support. The Saudis as a result greatly increased their funding to neo-

fundamentalist movements who were more concerned with sectarianism. All this

factors helped to strengthen Sectarianism from the early 1990s.

Even though religious parties in Pakistan have generally experienced rather meagre

showings in elections, large mainstream parties sometimes ally themselves with

religious parties perhaps to appear more acceptable to some voters. Sometimes the

larger national parties fall short of a commanding majority or that, the larger national

party in this type of coalition uses the smaller religious partner’s well disciplined

cadre as a street force and provides an outlet for officeholders in the later to play in

the actual political process. The Pakistan Muslim League (PML)’s main religious

collaborator was the JI, an urban based Islamist party with a long and bitter history of

strongly opposing the PPP.

The PPP’s leader Benazir Bhutto (b.1953-d. 2007) became involved in the major

public debate over what constitutes an Islamic system of government. She provided

stiff opposition to a constitutional amendment that would make the Sharia the

supreme law of Pakistan rather than just one of the many sources of law. This

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secular stance of Benazir made the need of the PPP for a religious ally to provide it

with a certain degree of religious legitimacy and preferably one which had Islamic

credentials to match that of the JI the partner of its archrival the PML (Haleem

2003:473).

Fazlur Rahman of JUI was appointed by Benazir Bhutto to be the Chairman of the

National Assembly’s Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs which had considerable

impacts on Pakistan’s international relations and domestic politics. This strange

appointment of Fazlur Rahman by Benazir is most surprising because of several

reasons. Why would a modernist female prime minister educated at both Harvard

and Oxford appoint a neo-fundamentalist clergyman to such a sensitive post?

Considering that there was no shortage of talent within the hierarchy of the PPP

such as historian and lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan and Cambridge educated Sufi landlord

Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

During this period of Pakistan’s history, the PPP’S chief rival was the IDA (Islamic

Democratic Alliance) which included as its largest component Nawaz Sharif’s right-

of-centre PML. Despite having the word Muslim in its name, the PML was seen as a

party stressing the entrenched interests of the landed elites, the military hierarchy

and the emerging class of industrialists which includes the Sharif clan, while the PPP

was less keen on accommodating the interests of the later two classes. Instead, the

PPP by exploiting its usual ‘socialist’ rhetoric claimed to represent the interests of

poor peasants and workers. Some segments of the lower urban middle class, as in

some other Muslim countries, increasingly alienated by the major national political

parties, had no alternative but to turn to the Islamist and neo-fundamentalist parties

(Behuria 2007:536).

One feasible alternative for the PPP was to come into an alliance with the Barelwi

oriented JUP (Jamiat Ulema Pakistan or Society for the Religious Scholars of

Pakistan). The advantage of having the JUP as a partner in a coalition was that it

was less demanding than other Muslim parties as it suffered from a weak structural

organization. The major drawbacks with this political set-up was that Pakistan’s rich

patron Saudi Arabia strongly disapproved of the Sufi inclined JUP and the JUP itself

was not particularly focused on the Afghan and Kashmir conflicts that formed the

cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy. In addition, the JUP had factions which

wanted more friendly relations with Iran as they saw Wahhabism as their main threat

within Islam (Ahmad 1998:119).

The only practical option left for the PPP in such a strange predicament was to ally

itself with the neo-fundamentalist JUI (F). Since the JUI (F) with its large Pashtun

support base was an eager protagonist of an aggressive Afghan policy and as with

the PPP it had a common history of detesting the JI. One of which is that the JI has

usually stayed away from Shia-Sunni sectarianism. The JI welcomed the Iranian

revolution and even claimed a few Shias within its ranks but essentially the JI is a

Sunni organisation, it is a political party, but acts sometimes more like a religious

sect (Iqtidar 2008:157).

The JUI (F) would not enter the PPP led coalition unless it received a firm promise

for a substantial role for its leader Fazlur Rahman. Benazir Bhutto’s Interior Minister

was General (retired) Naseerullah Khan Babur who retained his links with the military

especially its Pashtun officers in its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) as Babur

like Fazlur Rahman is also of Pashtun origin. Unlike Fazlur Rahman, Babur is not a

fundamentalist but both of them had political interests that overlapped to a large

extent.

Fazlur Rahman and Babur helped to persuade almost all of the Pakistani

establishment as well as its rich Arab allies to back the Taliban against its relatively

less rigid Islamist rivals. Even though the Taliban was not really a Wahhabi

organization but instead one with a Deobandi origins Saudi Arabia still endorsed

most of its agenda as it would function as a better tool as it was more anti-Shia and

therefore anti-Iran than its rivals. Many of the Arab Gulf States and Saudi Arabia

diverted the entire of their financial donations from the Islamist Afghan Mujahedeen

to the far more militant neo-fundamentalist Taliban.

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Since the Taliban appeared to have the backing of the Washington and the Texas Oil

Barons who were also very interested in the construction of massive oil pipelines to

the potentially rich deposits of Central Asia through Afghanistan and Pakistan and so

bypassing politically troublesome Iran. The Saudis now grew confident that Iran

would be soon encircled by a group of unfriendly states and its importance as an

energy producer and a regional military power would be greatly diminished.

Sunni fundamentalists of the most extremist variety, the Taliban especially with their

dismal human rights record regarding gender and minority issues, did however seem

to have a strong sense of unity and purpose in their ranks unlike their rivals the

various Mujahedeen organizations who were engaging in almost constant intra-

warfare. Some regions of Afghanistan had been under near anarchy until they were

conquered by the Taliban.

The United States, Pakistan and their Arab allies all believed that the Taliban would

be the best option to bring about much sought after political stability and peace in

Afghanistan which would be essential if an extensive network of oil and gas pipelines

were to be laid across Afghanistan. However being Sunni extremists, the Taliban

provided the SSP and other terrorist organizations with a place of safe haven in their

controlled region of Afghanistan which accounted for some four fifths of that county.

This close alliance of the SSP with the Taliban caused a grave crisis in the already

worsening law and order situation of Pakistan. Sectarianism claimed increasingly

high death tolls, causing some Pakistanis to rethink their country’s role in providing

support for the Taliban who were partially responsible for this serious situation

developing to such a dangerous level that the resulting political instability was

threatening Pakistan (Rashid,Ahmed. The Nation 21 January 1998.). Pakistan

seemed to have sacrificed its own wellbeing in serving the enormous geo-strategic

interests of its wealthy patrons (Haider,Ejaz. The Friday Times.03-09 July 1998).

Simultaneously the Taliban was providing similar amenities for Muslim militants

fighting in Indian Kashmir, many of who shared a Deobandi and often sectarian

background, which further deteriorated Indo-Pakistan relations to its lowest point

since the eventful year of 1971, resulting in an almost full scale war between the two

South Asian nuclear powers. For its part the Taliban being heavily dependent on

Pakistan could provide it with strategic depth in a war with India that its Mujahedeen

rivals especially those of non-Pashtun ethnicity were reluctant to agree as they were

not Pakistan’s clients to the same extent of the Taliban (Ahmed 2012:84,90).

By allying with the Deobandi Taliban-JUI combine, Benazir had effectively allied to

some extent with the SSP. This alignment started to erode her support base among

Shias. Traditionally the Shia community had usually almost on an en bloc basis

supported the PPP in the same way as the Alevis, a `Shia’ community in Turkey

fearing the Sunni majority, usually is associated with secular and left-wing parties

(Karolewski 2008:450). Benazir had become to think the PPP’s close electoral

association with the Shia vote-bank looked like a future liability in a Sunni majority

country. She had remembered that in the 1970s, her father’s socialist policies had

alienated many Shia landlords and industrialists and even the Shia ulama had

walked away from him (Cole 2002:185). Benazir had hold to entice more Sunni

voters to the PPP but miscalculated that the shift towards attracting some more

Sunni votes would simultaneously lose much more of her Shia votes. The growing

alienation of the previously reliable Shia vote dealt the PPP with a severe blow. In

the 1997 elections, which Benazir had lost by a huge margin was partly due to her

losing the Shia vote to the PML. Low voter turnout, discontent over financial

mismanagement and increasing levels of violence during Benazir’s second term

were the other factors responsible for her very poor performance at the polls. The

PPP was reduced to almost a regional party as the Bhutto’s home province of Sindh

was the only place where it was the largest party.

Previously the IDA was associated with the legacy of General Zia ul Haq who had

encouraged the spread of sectarianism but now the IDA realized that sectarianism

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was getting out of control and becoming counterproductive to its long-term aims to

present itself to voters as a coherent alternative to the PPP. In a similar situation to

the early 1980s in India, when the BIP had moderated and moved towards the centre

of the Indian political spectrum (Jaffrelot 2010:49). However during this period the

traditionally secular Congress was moving on the path of religious nationalism by

causing divisions between Hindus and Sikhs.

There also occurred an almost complete role reversal in Pakistani politics as the IDA

chief Nawaz Sharif took decisive action against both Shia and Sunni militants so as

to appear even-handed. Sectarian violence lessened after Sharif had replaced

Benazir as prime minister. (The Dawn. 26 December 1998).

During Sharif’s second term in office, even law enforcement officials who did not

actively pursue the government policy against sectarianism, were jailed and fined for

their inaction (Pakistan Political Perspectives; March 1998). Although himself a

Sunni, Nawaz Sharif was targeted by the SSP’s paramilitary force the Laskhker-e

Jhangvi for his stance against sectarianism.

The SSP had even previously entered into electoral agreement with the PPP in the

Punjab provincial assembly. In return for its support to the PPP in the Punjab

assembly, PPP covertly let the SSP and its allies carry out their violent sectarianism

unabated. Many Shia landlords and professionals abandoned their long-standing

links with the PPP and joined the rival PML.

This radical shift in Shia political loyalty did not entirely protect Shias from Sunni

extremist attacks. For instance, Syed Javed Hussain Zaidi, a leading Shia lawyer

and senior PML leader was soon killed (Pakistan Political Perspectives: March

1997). The majority of lower middle class supporters of the Shia religious TNFJ party

followed the Shia elites into the PML. There occurred a major division in the ranks of

the TNFJ as a breakaway faction dominated by youths believed the brutal violence

of Laskhker-e Jhangvi could only be deterred by setting up a more militant Shia

group, believing in fighting fire with fire, so the extremist Shia organisation the Sipah-

e Muhammad (The Army of the Prophet Muhammed) was formed.

President General Pervez Musharraf being a moderate Sunni required the support of

the Shia in order to clamp down on Deobandi and Wahhabi extremism in Pakistan

(Cole 2002:187). He needed to proceed carefully as not to alienate either Sunnis or

Shias but to accommodate them all which is a very difficult task. America and

Pakistan have both paid a very heavy price for their involvement in sponsoring Sunni

Muslim extremism in many countries in their successful quest in ousting the

Communist administration in Kabul and curbing Iranian influence. For Pakistan it was

perhaps the most important catalyst responsible for the rising tide of sectarianism.

Sectarianism in Pakistan has also taken the form that of intra-Sunni conflict. Maulana

Saleem Qadri the leader of Sunni Tehreek, a militant Barelwi organisation was killed

by the SSP (Pakistan Political Perspectives: 07 July 2001). This means that the SSP

is now fighting on two fronts, against the Shias and the Barelwis. The Relations

between Barelwis and Deobandis is complicated, one strand within the SSP calls for

unity within Sunni ranks by accommodating their differences against the greater

threat of Shi’ism (Farooqi, Speech) while the other believes that some Barelwis are

too close to Shias and therefore are contaminated with Shi’ism (Hyderi, Speech).

This dilemma is somewhat similar to that which the RSS faces in India where its

traditional Sanathan Hindu support base opposes caste reform while its reformist

Arya Samaj faction believes that caste reform will encourage greater unity within

Hindu ranks in facing the `Muslim threat’ (Jaffrelot 2010:46).

The Wahhabis in Pakistan don’t want to be overshadowed by the Deobandis in

Sunni militancy, so they have formed their own armed organization Laskhker-e Taiba

which for now has not entered into direct conflict with the Shias. Under General Zia

there was increasing Islamization of Pakistani state and society, some of the junior

officers with Islamist leaning of his era have reached the highest ranks today

(Abbas,A. The Herald. September| 2001). So the fight against the sectarian virus is

extremely difficult as sectarianism is a variant of a particularly violent manifestation

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of the fundamentalism which was partially natured by the short- term interests of

foreign and domestic patrons. Sadly sectarianism continues to haunt Pakistan.

The War on Terror in the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11 has, however,

achieved some of the objectives of the Milli Yikjahati Council. The massive air

bombing which helped to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan created a powerful

image of Islam being in danger from America, which many religious leaders used

successfully to greatly enhance their political standing. They joined in a broad

alliance, the Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) based on anti-Americanism which

included such diverse and opposing partners as the Brelwi Jammat Ulema Pakistan

JUP), Jammat-e-lslami and the Taliban’s parent Deobandi organisation JUI. It even

included Shias belonging to the TJP, who were not happy belong to the Sunni

dominated religious alliance but realized its practical value (Pinault 2003a:84). The

TJP had opposed the Islamisation during the Zia period. Zia had enjoyed the strong

support of both the JUI and the JI. The later two were the main components of this

contradictory alliance but both of these parties had leaders who shared the same

Pashtun ethnicity. The Pakistan military Junta fearful of both the PML and PPP

endorsed this political religious alliance as it was less threatening to its immediate

interests.

However, the SSP did not join the MMA which since the October 200 2 elections has

controlled the NWFP adjoining the sensitive Afghanistan border. The SSP not only

opposed the MMA, which included the TJP, the parent organization of its bitter rival

the SMP, among its ranks, but also it supported General Musharraf, despite him

officially banning sectarian organisations, curbing extremist madrasas and making a

U-turn regarding Pakistan’s support for the SSP’s sectarian ally, the Taliban, in the

face of threats from the United States in the War on Terror. Despite the MMA being a

strong vocal critic of Musharraf’s pro-American stance, it is a junior partner of the

Musharraf-backed Muslim League administration in Baluchistan. Sectarian violence

had decreased as a result of such political manoeuvres (Chandran 2003:4).

Conclusion

The main concern of this thesis is to further the understanding of the development of

sectarianism in Pakistan. Its major task has been to provide a framework for

explaining the interlinked dynamics of state and religion in country in which society

has overtime become increasingly divided on sectarian lines, however I have

stressed that sectarianism is more a historical, social and political entity than just

about theological controversies. This thesis has focused on why sectarianism in

Pakistan is about contests over religious identity and the nature of the state. In

Pakistan, the question of the recognition of Shia identity as a sect legitimately

different from Sunni identity is intertwined in ideological and socio-economic conflicts

dominating the issues of Pakistani nationalism, secularism and religion. The

Pakistani nation building quest centred on a Sunni majority identity core which

marginalized minority Shias who feared assimilation.

The thesis demanded an understanding of the history and society of Pakistan, not

just from its independence in 1947 but that of this particular region and adjoining

regions from colonial and medieval periods. Pakistan is a nation-state whose

existence is derived from religious nationalism, every administration in its history

whether civilian or military, secular or religious has had to place Islam and Muslim

identity at the top of its agenda in both times of peace and war. In the previous

chapters, I have looked in depth at the complex relation between state and society in

Pakistan, in particular the roles of elites in identity politics and religious

organisations. Sectarianism is both a historical and social condition as well as a

political one. The research has paid attention to the transformation and politicization

of both Shia and Sunni identities. It is not limited to just militant organisations but has

filtered into wider society. Sunni and Shia identities were once just social identities

but existing in a fragile state dependent on religious legitimacy, these identities

became political identities.

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Demanding historical situations have produced rival contests over religion and

society in Pakistan. Initially Muslim nationalism especially when it was the dominant

ideology of the early phrase of Pakistan was essentially about Muslim culture and

surface acknowledgement of the religious aspects of Islam, it was a relatively

tolerant ideology as it tried to embrace aspects of liberal democracy but later

debates arose that questioned the level of Islamisation that the new nation state

should embrace especially when the state was challenged by regionally marginalized

segments of society from which arose secessionist movements inspired by cultural

and socio-economic disparities, resentments and grievances such as the lack of

proper representation in the state structure of particular ethnic groups. Islam was

used by the successive governments as a binding ideology over a multi-ethnic

society, challenges to the state and its domination by certain ethnic groups seen as

anti-national and anti-Islam, but this created further divisions as bitter debates such

as `whose Islam’ and `which Islam’ should be implemented began to be argued,

which were the opposite of intentions which shows that this state policy has failed on

several fronts as neither sectarian or regional groups have been reconciled.

The violent break up of Pakistan in 1971, led to the independence of Bangladesh, in

which Pakistan lost a huge Sunni population, for the period 1947-1971, especially

since the 1950s, the principally Sunni Bengali Muslims were the internal other, since

1971, the new Pakistan, which was once the west wing, had a much higher Shia

minority as a percentage of the population. This increased group consciousness

among the Pakistani population. Religious minorities such as Shias and even more

hated Ahmadis were increasingly the new internal others. During the leadership of

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, his PPP regime which initially was a relatively progressive

administration drifted increasingly towards religious politics partly as it was never

able to reconcile the leftwing progressives and rightwing landlords within its own

party ranks. The Ahmadis were legally declared as non-Muslims in 1974. This thesis

is not concerned with the actual doctrinal rights and wrongs of this issue. This Anti-

Ahmadi constitutional amendment was the single most authoritative movement

towards making religious boundaries a paramount feature of Pakistani politics. The

Pakistani state lost it neutrality, it was no longer a secular state in any sense,

previously society shunned heretic sects but the state now narrowed the definition of

a Muslim, the state was now an integral player in sectarian politics.

From the analysis presented in the earlier chapters it appears that no single reason

alone can be blamed for the rise of sectarianism in Pakistan. 'There exists a general

consensus among social scientists that a combination of various reasons can be

responsible for the increased hostility between the various Muslim sects. Yet there

are several reasons which social scientists give more importance, perhaps to

emphasis their own particular viewpoints. Some of these reasons are featured in

most of the works on sectarianism and therefore have in termed as being dominant

factors.

Most political scientists while trying to explain the sectarian phenomenon have

devoted as their discipline demands to very narrow contemporary period. By lacking

a historical perspective, they have not fully realized the more complex diversity anti

intense competition within the broad categories of Sunnism and especially Shi’ism.

They have emphasized the international sponsorship of extremism but failed to

acknowledge that Pakistani militants are also inspired by the long sectarian histories

of Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia which provides an ideal model for them to

emulate. This religious mobilization was also empowered by the Pakistan military’s

covert endorsement of Sunni Jihadi/sectarian organizations on Pakistan’s eastern

and western borders.

However, political scientists have uniformly argued that the socio-economic growth of

Pakistan which being highly uneven was not keeping in pace with the aspirations of

some sectors of its population, especially in the case of the lower middle classes.

These people increasingly became more frustrated by their political weakness in a

power structure dominated by the rich industrialists, feudal elites, the bureaucracy

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and military.

As mentioned before the support base for militant sectarian organizations is usually

confined to the urban lower middle class families who are known for becoming very

obsessed with the ascetic religious aspects of Muslim life.

One of the reasons why their religious resurgence developed into sectarianism was

that they become squeezed by the upward mobility of those below them and the

entrenched position of the classes above them. The Muslim petit bourgeois got

locked in a difficult socio-economic position had no ideological choice in the absence

of alternatives but to use Islamism as the only available tool of social protest against

the elitist state apparatus. The elites realizing that the petit bourgeois were loosening

out of their patron-client ties, invoked the power of sectarianism as a method of

controlling the challenge posed by the assertive stance of the petit bourgeois. The

Muslim lower middle class is by no means a unified class as it is incredibly

fragmented by internal sectarian divisions. The Muslim petit bourgeois is highly

conscious of its sectarian affiliations while in the rural areas, caste or tribal identities

are stronger, so in urban areas sectarian identity has largely replaced caste or tribal

identity as the strongest identity. As already seen in the preceding chapters, caste or

tribal identity often converges with sectarian identity. Certain tribes or castes such as

the Qezalbash, Talpur, Bhutto and the Hazaras are Shias.

Many of these Shia tribes came to Pakistan in order to flee severe discrimination in

their original homelands. Pakistan or the areas that came to form Pakistan were not

only relatively free from sectarianism but were a sanctuary for those fleeing from

Sunnis or even other Shias. It must extremely distressing for the descendants of

these tribes to learn that they are having to face sectarianism almost as in the case

of their ancestors had experienced in Afghanistan and Iran.

Each Muslim sect wants to homogenize all beliefs and practices by imposing its own

interpretation from above on others, yet fails to acknowledge the debt each has to its

rivals. Conflicts that originally were intra-Sunni later developed to Shia-Sunni

antagonisms once that a particular Sunni-sub sect had overpowered its rival Sunni

sub-sects, as in the case of Saudi Arabia but the reverse seems to be happening in

Pakistan, where several Sunni sub-sects are in contesting their Sunni-ness some by

targeting the Shias as the negative other. The targeting of Shi’ism was once a

unifying call for the Sunnis, yet intra-Sunni confrontations are slowly appearing

alongside the more frequent Shia-Sunni hostilities. Power relationships play a crucial

role in sectarianism, as religious elites challenge secular elites or other religious

elites. The instrumentalist explanations seem to be better at analyzing sectarian

conflicts as they highlight the role of elites reshaping and hardening identities that

were previously porous or blurred. The ulema of the Deoband School created a more

visible boundary between Shi’ism and Sunnism by selecting and omitting certain

beliefs and practices such as the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday (Milad-ul-

Nabi), which had brought Sunnis and Shias together. The Deobandis are partly

inspired by the Wahhabis who are the very opposites of the non-sectarian Sufis but

the Deobandis are still distinct from both. Ironically the more rigid Sunni sub sects

are to an extent without their knowledge following the steps taken by the Shia Ali

Majlesi, who was perhaps the first scholar to practically enhance the status of the

clergy at the expense of the mystics. Yet Wahhabism is pitted against Shi’ism in

many Muslim countries and sometimes has to ally itself with other Sunni schools in

its ultimate aim is to eradicate the threat of Shi’ism, which it has to enter into political

compromises which are contradictory to its own religious ethos.

I would say that as Pakistan is still evolving from Feudalism to Capitalism, it is

experiencing problems of an identity crisis as its power structures are coming under

considerable strain. The feudals are losing some of their power but the industrialists

and bureaucrats have not entirely replaced them and these categories are becoming

overlapped. All these alignments and realignments leave the religious elites in a

patron-client set-up where they are a link between the secular elites and some

sections of the masses. So the religious elites are actually intermediary in position

which they intensely detest and so they have turned to sectarianism as they hope

that they can emerge as more credible challengers to the establishment by the use

of violence. Sectarianism by being violent threatens civil society in Pakistan yet it is

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only a symptom of the malfunctioning of the Pakistani state which has helped

sectarianism to develop into an uncontrollable monster due to elite manipulation at

local, national and international levels. The manifestation of sectarianism in Pakistan

is more complex than what I had earlier assumed. The above account shows that

sectarian organizations have alliances and counter-alliances with more mainstream

religious and allegedly secular national political parties. As such alliances are more

disposed to be situational than ideological it is hard to say if there is any hope for

real reconciliation between various sectarian groups. The Pakistani state used

religion to counterbalance other forms of identity, an approach that instead brought

into existence a society now fragmented on sectarian as well as regional, tribal and

linguistic lines.

The stability and welfare of Pakistan desires its political elite to develop a new

course for Pakistan’s religious nationalism. This thesis shows that the state’s

emphasis on curbing pluralism and imposing religion from above have created a

state of affairs that has evolved from accommodation to competition and finally

conflict. Pakistani state seeks for a common ideology of Islam that can unite its

people. It has failed to understand that Pakistan’s regional linguistic, tribal and

sectarian diversity is the country’s best asset. If Pakistan’s leaders can

institutionalize a more accommodating discourse that can be inclusive of its

multiplicity of identities it will provide them with a more authentic legitimacy and the

people of Pakistan will enjoy more individual rights and political participation.

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Mphil 2012 london_met__thesis_v3fb

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