Accommodation, Competition and Conflict ...

1 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 majorityminority 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.


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 Òrthodoxy’ (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.


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

7 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil (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’ alRashidun, 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

9 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

11 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

13 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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, ShiaSunni 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

15 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 ìmagined 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 ìt 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

17 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 ìnvent’ 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 instrumentalistprimordialist 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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, Hafeezur-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.


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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 ethnicreligious 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 IndoPakistan war in 1971. This represented another failure for the ideology of Muslim

31 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil nationalism helps to bring people together but it simultaneously divides them and maintains that division, for its attributes of solidarity, race, language and territorycannot 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 antinational 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 2006:8890). 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 nonMuslim 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.


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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 socioeconomic 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 nonMuslim 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 antiAhmadism 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 subnational 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil transcended religious boundaries but become a resource to offset the reformistrevivalists 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 antiShia 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 proAmerican inclinations were challenged by the Iranians had to limit Iran’s influence among Muslims elsewhere and with its sizable Shia minority it expanded its antiIranian/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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 neofundamentalists 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.


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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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.


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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

67 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 Hindispeaking 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

69 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 TurkoAfghan 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.

71 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

73 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

75 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 weakwilled 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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, subsects 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 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 founderleader 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

81 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

83 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

85 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 socioeconomic 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


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

89 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 intraMuslim 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

91 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 socioeconomic picture was much more complex in Awadh and so likewise oversimplifications 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: 292293). 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).

93 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 antiWestern 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 antiShia 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

95 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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-iIslami 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-ilslami 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).


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. Mohammadi’s

These three were Maulavi Muhammad Nabi

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.

99 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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

101 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 antiTaliban Northern Alliance (Shah 2005:622). Thus Hazaras were again exposed to

103 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 BaluchHazara relations in Pakistan. Thus during much of the period under study, the ShiaSunni 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 neofundamentalist 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

105 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 rightof-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.


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 intrawarfare. 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

109 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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 Sipahe 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

111 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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.


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

115 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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-ulNabi), 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

117 SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil 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.
