When Heterodoxy Becomes Heresy: Using Bourdieu's ...

Sociology of Religion Advance Access published April 16, 2015 Sociology of Religion 2015, 0:0 1-22 doi:10.1093/socrel/srv015

When Heterodoxy Becomes Heresy: Using Bourdieu’s Concept of Doxa to Describe State-Sanctioned Exclusion in Pakistan Ali Qadir* University of Tampere

Key words: sociology of heresy; Islam; doxa; symbolic capital; Ahmadiyya; Pakistan.

Sociologists of religion have traditionally focused on underlining the importance of the category of religion in social behavior. Recent scholarship in the field, notably in this journal, has turned toward elaborating the complex, nuanced, and unobtrusive ways in which the category of religion manifests (Ammerman 2014; Bender et al. 2012; Cadge and Konieczny 2014; Marti 2014). This paper takes as its starting point that religion in many cases informs sociality, but goes on to argue that changes within that category are important to understand broader social processes such as citizenship and exclusion. Specifically, the paper asks how and under what conditions religious heterodoxy, or otherness,

*Direct correspondence to Ali Qadir, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tampere, 33014 Tampere, Finland. Tel: þ358 40 190 13 51. E-mail: [email protected]. # The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals. [email protected]

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This paper employs and adapts Bourdieu’s concept of doxa to describe the declaration of heresy against the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan. The Ahmadiyya, avowedly Muslim, were declared heretics by constitutional amendment in 1974, leading to their widespread persecution and bans on their use of Islamic symbols. Most analyses of this event—from a statehood and authority/“Othering” perspective—tend to overlook why the Ahmadi were singled out for this unusual exclusion and why emphasis was placed on symbolic violence. It discursively analyzes the recently declassified transcript of parliamentary proceedings to reveal three interlinked theological and political elements of Ahmadi heterodoxy that challenged the sociopolitical order. The analysis also shows how orthodoxy emerged and was institutionalized in a dialectical relationship with that heterodoxy. Further, the discussion focuses on the continuity of symbolic capital inherent in institutionalization and the implications of this for Ahmadis and other religious “heretics” in Pakistan. By exploring how heterodoxy becomes heresy, this case highlights the utility of Bourdieu’s schema and proposes some adjustments to it to better understand modern religious heresy and then export lessons into other analytical domains.

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SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION


becomes heresy, and what that entails with regard to social exclusion. In answering these questions, this paper has two main analytical aims: (1) to show that while persecution of religious heresy is often symbolic in character, this necessarily entails “real-world” persecution due to state involvement; and (2) to argue that multiple levels of heterodoxy have to come together discursively in order to construct the category of “heresy.” In the process, the paper also illustrates how the general sociological concept of relationality—between heterodoxy and orthodoxy—can be contextualized and tuned in the arena of religion to yield lessons for export to other sociological domains (Wuthnow 2014). To accomplish this analytic work, the paper employs and adapts Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) schema of doxa, orthodoxy, and heterodoxy to examine the discourse by which the parliament of Pakistan passed a constitutional amendment in 1974 declaring the Ahmadiyya community legally non-Muslim. Statesanctioned exclusion of the Ahmadiyya from the category of Islam affected their social and legal status, leading to unprecedented persecution. Studies of this case have focused on the (il)legality of the amendment (e.g., Khan 2003; Lathan 2008; Siddiq 1995; Uddin 2013) or on state-formation and realpolitik in Pakistan (Khan 2012; Saeed 2007). However, this scholarship tends to overlook the question of heresy itself. Key questions ignored in such research are made explicit in this paper: why should the Ahmadiyya be excluded in this unusual fashion rather than other “deviant” Muslim communities, what is the significance of the state ban on Ahmadi use of “Islamic” symbols (such as “mosque,” “aza¯n” [call to prayer], or shaha¯da, the Islamic declaration of faith), and what does it take for “heresy” to become a real category of state-sanctioned exclusion? To appreciate the difference between heterodoxy and heresy, it is worth highlighting that theological deviance is inherently different from statesanctioned exclusion. The former may lead to social ostracizing, boycotts, and so on, which many Ahmadis also experience around the world. But a declaration of heresy authorized by a state carries another kind of weight. In the case of the Ahmadiyya, it allowed official discrimination and encouraged further popular violence. “Heresy” became a real category of social reality in Pakistan and a legitimate justification for exclusion. It is thus important to ask how this happened, and whether we can export that understanding to other cases. By undertaking a qualitative discourse analysis of the recently declassified transcript of parliamentary discussion on this amendment, the paper shows how a specific, historical context of crisis led to an unusual discursive space in which three levels of heterodoxy combined to result in a declaration of heresy. These insights help make a contribution to the still-nascent application of sociological frameworks to the study of religious heresy (Berlinerblau 2001; Kurtz 1983; Zito 1983) by tying together symbolic and physical persecution. They also allow us to export lessons from the domain of sociology of religion to the general sociological concept of relationality as expressed in Bourdieu’s schema of heterodoxy and orthodoxy. As Wuthnow (2014:599) notes, “domain-specific concepts . . . force modifications of general concepts” that may then be exported to other empirical

WHEN HETERODOXY BECOMES HERESY

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SAYING THE UNSAID: HERESY AND BOURDIEU’S DOXIC SCHEMA In most research, heresy (from the Greek hairesis, meaning choice) is generally taken in its dictionary sense as an “opinion or doctrine at variance with the orthodox or accepted doctrine, especially of a church or religious system; or, the maintaining of such an opinion or doctrine” (Collins English Dictionary 2012). Studies into heresy tend, by default, to look for orthodoxy as the pre-given norm against which heterodoxy may be assessed. However, heretical views have often emerged before dogma was strictly codified, as Max Weber realized and described in his account of Hindu Veda evolution in response to heretical doctrines (Weber 1978:459; see also Henderson 1998). Looking for deviance in doctrines also leads us to overlook communities whose practices are seen as heterodox, even if their doctrinal differences could be theologically tolerated. Doxa and Discourse Moving toward a more practice-oriented social theory of heresy, this paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu. In An Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu drew on Husserl’s early recovery of the ancient Greek word doxa (opinion), but he distanced himself from both phenomenological explorations (Bourdieu 1977:168, 233 n.15) and post-Marxist theorization of “ideology” (Eagleton 1992). Contrary to the over-cognitive emphasis of both, for Bourdieu, doxa refers to “pre-reflexive intuitive knowledge shaped by experience, to unconscious inherited physical and relational predispositions” (Deer 2008:120). As extra-cognitive, it is lived and practical, evident only when ordinary life expressed in symbols and rituals is ruptured, and is hence “a set of fundamental beliefs which does not even need to be asserted in the form of an explicit, self-conscious dogma” (Bourdieu 2000


cases within the same domain (other instance of heresy) or to other domains (for instance, science studies, which also often examine heresy backed by authoritative exclusion). This paper presents Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of doxa and discourse, paying attention to the advantages of this framework as well as to some of its gaps and how they may be addressed for this analysis. The primary data and methodological approach are briefly discussed before turning to an introduction to Ahmadiyyat, the background and international context to the 1974 amendment, and some important Ahmadi practices. Qualitative analysis of the data show how theological and political doxic elements erupted into discourse, and how the discourse led to institutionalization of orthodoxy. These findings are discussed with an emphasis on how emergent orthodoxy involves institutional continuity to target the Ahmadis as well as other religious “heterodox” in Pakistan. Finally, by way of conclusion, I suggest this research could stimulate other analyses and export these lessons to other empirical examinations of heresy.

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[1997]:16). This emphasis on the universe of the unsaid allows analytical attention on practices in addition to doctrines. As Bourdieu suggests, doxa is best conceptualized in contrast with discourse, i.e., that which is argued or discussed, or the field of opinion. Where discourse is cognitively determined, doxa is embodied, lived, and assumed. Doxa is where “what is essential goes without saying because it comes without saying,” constituting that part of tradition which is silent, “not least about itself as a tradition” (Bourdieu 1977:167, emphasis original). Where discourse is ruled by majority, doxa is characterized by unanimity (1977:168). And, finally, where discourse is possible to delineate, doxa is indeterminate, more akin to a negative space only recognized when new doxic elements emerge into cognitive discourse. Bourdieu links doxic eruption into discourse to moments of crises. In these moments, the doxic boundary is questioned and pushed back in a space of extraordinary discourse by “heterodoxy.” A choice to question the arbitrariness of the political order brings that order out from the universe of unasked assumption and into opinion-ruled discourse. For Bourdieu, dominant groups then undertake the conscious activity of codifying doxic elements into “orthodoxy, straight, or rather straightened opinion . . . that exists only in the objective relationship which opposes it to heterodoxy” (Bourdieu 1977:169, emphasis original). Orthodoxy, then, develops largely in response to heterodox questioning of the unsaid. Bourdieu’s idea of “symbolic capital” is also relevant here as a social resource encapsulating features such as honor, dignity, and standing of an individual or group (Wacquant 2007). For Bourdieu, symbolic capital is part of a competitive symbolic economy, can be analyzed in economistic terms, and is “readily convertible back into economic capital” (Bourdieu 1977:179). Struggles over symbolic capital, including in the field of religion, constantly change its valuation, and, consequently, its use as a political resource. From this perspective, heresy cannot be explained entirely as manifested reaction to materialist oppression. The Ahmadi hereticization certainly cannot be cast in this materialist light, and its community members cannot in general be classified on common socioeconomic or ethnic markers prevalent in Pakistani society. On the other hand, the symbolic capital at stake in the Ahmadi case is also translatable into political economy, including profits, positions, and patronage. It is, in that sense, as real as any materialist resource. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital is useful here as it “transcends the classic idealism/materialism bipolarity by proposing a materialist yet non-reductive account of cultural life” (Swartz 1996:72). As Bourdieu points out, there are “symbolic struggles over the power to produce and to impose the legitimate vision of the world,” to create “visions of division . . . through the words used to designate or to describe individuals, groups or institutions” (Bourdieu 1989:20 – 23). Bourdieu was attentive to the importance of the state as “holder of the monopoly over legitimate symbolic violence” (Bourdieu 1989:22). However, he hardly attended to the outcomes of such struggles where the ability to define classifications was backed by the ability to enforce them. Of course, Bourdieu realized that institutionalized/formal


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authority is not necessary to impose a norm or to include/exclude members from a group. Informal authorities can be equally effective in delimiting the field through, for example, knowledge legitimation. Yet, when the state’s political power is involved, heterodoxy becomes an official social category that carries consequences fundamentally different from ostracism or other civic results of exclusion. Bourdieu’s doxic schema may be illustrated as follows (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1. Bourdieu’s schema of doxa (adapted from Bourdieu 1977:168).


Tuning Bourdieu: Adjustments to the Doxic Schema to Understand Ahmadi Hereticization In general, there has been little application of Bourdieu’s cultural sociology to the study of religion (for two exceptions, see Swartz [1996] on the theoretical relevance of “fields” and Verter [2003] on “symbolic capital”). There are some good reasons for this neglect. Bourdieu’s concept of doxa is intriguing in its flexibility yet exasperating in its vagueness. Also, Bourdieu rarely applied his concept of doxa to religion, focusing instead on profane realms such as academia (e.g., Bourdieu 1988). A stronger concentration on religion might have softened Bourdieu’s overpolarized criticism of Husserl’s cognitivism. Myles (2004) points out that Bourdieu drew the concept from Husserl’s early writings, but he exaggerated it to emphasize the embodied “universe of practice” as opposed to cognitive “knowledge.” Useful as this is, Myles shows how the distinction between doxa and discourse is not so clear-cut, even in Bourdieu’s own anthropological account of the Kabylia. Going

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DATA AND METHODS To foreground the actual moment of hereticization, I study the recently declassified transcript of the parliamentary proceedings of 1974 discussing the second constitutional amendment to declare the Ahmadiyya heretics (Pakistan 1974). The proceedings have been kept secret “in the national interest” and were declassified on legal petition only in 2010 (Hamdani 2012). The transcript, now in the public domain, is extensive: 21 volumes with over 3,000 pages, mostly in


back to the phenomenological concept, Myles (2004:99) notes that “Husserl distinguishes an elementary ‘protodoxa’ (or ‘urdoxa’) from more developed cognitive modes of ‘judgement’ and ‘predictiveness’ but between these are a number of other states of consciousness.” That is, doxa does not appear in discourse ex nihilo: it draws on existing (if eclipsed) cognitive knowledge, even though its peculiar formulation is unique in those particular objective conditions. A feature of doxic eruption by crisis is the construction of primordial authenticity, by both orthodoxy and heterodoxy, constructing historical narratives to support the respective claim. If orthodoxy and heresy are two poles of religious categorization, then shades of heterodoxy in between must also be accounted for. Bourdieu never appears to have resolved the grades of distinction between orthodoxy and heresy. Drawing on Simmel’s analysis of the stranger, Kurtz (1983:1087) argued that, “heresy refers to an intense union of both nearness and remoteness.” Bourdieu’s lack of attention to religion meant that he overlooked how critical this distinction becomes when differentiating religious deviance that is acceptable to the wider community from that which is not. This becomes relevant here since Bourdieu largely ignored the role of the state when it came to religion. Finally, once orthodoxy develops and institutionalizes in response to an unacceptable deviance, it becomes all the more active in seeking out and excluding presently “acceptable” deviance. Bourdieu’s concept of doxa in itself would be difficult to use in response to this study’s question regarding the future of the Ahmadiyya and other heterodox in Pakistan. By unpacking the relationality of orthodoxy and heresy to include additional heterodoxies, we gain the ability to extend the analysis beyond one instance of hereticization. This is where Bourdieu’s ignoring the state is crucial. In the Muslim world, in particular, the very evolution of the postcolonial nation-state was entwined with religious institutions. Muslim-majority states typically harness the popular legitimacy of religious institutions (Driessen 2014) and fuse religion with national identity and public norms (Cesari 2014). State regulation and sanctioning must be accounted for if we are to make sense of religious behavior. These adjustments to Bourdieu’s doxic schema are represented below to indicate a revised framework for analyzing the constitutional declaration of heresy against Ahmadis in Pakistan (Figure 2).


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FIGURE 2. Revised doxic schema (adapted from Bourdieu 1977:168).


Urdu. Yet, there is no debate that is evident in the transcript as there is not one dissenting voice recorded from any member. The committee summoned the leader of the Ahmadiyya (Mirza Nasir Ahmad) and a witness for the Lahori group to defend their claims to be called “Muslims.” The first 13 volumes of the record of the committee read like a court hearing with a “cross-examination” of “witnesses” by the Attorney General of Pakistan, while the last eight volumes comprise statements by committee members and other evidence. While full texts of court judgments and statements by theologians are included in favor of declaring Ahmadis heretics, Mirza Nasir Ahmad’s written statement (M. N. Ahmad 2003) is excluded from the official record. The nature of this research object required a micro qualitative approach (Spickard 2007). More specifically, I employed qualitative discourse analysis (Perelman 1982; Wood and Kroger 2000) with particular attention to the fact that this is a performative text (creating future actions) rather than a narrative reporting (of past actions). In line with the social constructionist perspective adopted here, such analysis seeks to unpack discourse as “an institutionalized way of thinking, embedded in language, that shapes people’s thoughts and behaviors” (Spickard 2007:132). Qualitative discourse analysis offers an opportunity to unmask patterns that stand behind a text: how power shapes the language we use and how language informs power structures. In particular, justifications for an action are most often rhetorically built on naturalized assumptions. In this respect, this is an ideal approach to understanding how heterodoxy was turned into heresy with “real-world” consequences.

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I analyzed the text for patterns that reveal power relations, which are often so naturalized that they are assumed as self-evident. In my analysis, I paid special attention to justifications for or against a declaration of heresy against the Ahmadiyya. Therefore, I did not begin with predefined categories whose frequency I tested in the data corpus; rather, I first examined the context of the data to uncover what kinds of events constituted this particular form of speech. Next, I searched the entire corpus to identify argumentation patterns for and against the hereticization. Following fundamental principles of qualitative social research, the idea was to build a broad enough categorization that captured the variations in arguments (Strauss 1987). In reporting the results below, I illustrate these variations by quotations from the data.

Ahmadiyyat was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in 1889 as an Islamic reform movement in the town of Qadian in British-ruled Punjab, now in India. The movement quickly became controversial in the subcontinent mainly due to Mirza Ahmad’s claim to “prophethood,” allegedly violating a deeply held belief among Muslims that Muhammad was the last of the prophets sent by God. The Ahmadi response to this rests on a subtle point that has been surveyed excellently by Friedmann (2003) and others.1 Briefly, the response rests on differences in interpretation of the Quranic reference (33:40) to Muhammad as “kha¯tim alnabiyyı¯n” [final prophet] and of a famous hadı¯th [oral tradition] of the Prophet referring to himself as the “seal of the prophets.”2 The common interpretation emphasizes the sense of the term kha¯tim as temporal finality, viz. that Muhammad was the temporally last in a succession of prophets sent by Allah and, concomitantly, that prophecy was sealed in time after his death in AD 632.3 Ahmadis interpret the same term as emphasizing logical finality, kha¯tim as ultimate and, thus, that Muhammad awards the final “seal,” or guarantee of authenticity, to perfect all prophecies. These are taken to include later “minor” (non-law-bearing) prophecies reflected in the glory of Muhammad, who is the temporally and logically ultimate law-bearing prophet. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad based his claim on a long-standing mystical tradition of fina-fi-il-Rusool [negation of one’s identity in that of the Prophet].4 1 See also Valentine (2008:ch. 6, ch. 9). An informative Ahmadi response is also included in testimony in the South African Supreme Court Case decided 1985 (Aziz 1987). 2 Al-Bukha¯rı¯, Sahı¯h, Kita¯b al-mana¯qib 18 (vol. 2, page 390). 3 This view is amplified in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, in which the root word “khatm” is strictly ambiguous but in common parlance often connotes “final” as “last.” Sunni Muslims stress temporal finality more than Shi’a; the latter defend temporal finality of prophethood equally, but allow for ongoing guidance by imams, even infallible ones. 4 This is a traditional Sufi goal of mystical union. Abu Yazid Bustami (d. 874), Abu Bakr Shibli (d. 945), Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani (d. 1166), Khwaja Mu’innuddin Chisti (d. 1236), and Farid Ganj Shakar (d. 1265) are just some saints who made similar ecstatic pronouncements. For a thorough account, see the testimony in Aziz (1987:129– 53).


AHMADIYYAT


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Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s claim to reflected prophethood is only one aspect of his prolific message. He also referred to himself as the mujaddid [reformer] of the century, drawing on a tradition that a reformer of the religion would appear every 100 years, and as muhaddath [one to whom God speaks]. Also among his many writings are frequent references to Jihad-e-Akbar [Greatest Holy War] as being the fight of believers against their inner demons, and to military battle against nonbelievers as being only the “Smallest Jihad.” A key element of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s mission was the practice of bay’t [initiation] with him as spiritual leader. The act of bay’t makes an Ahmadi, and this practice has carried on after his death with a continuation of leaders of the Ahmadi community. The bay’t is a singularly esoteric act bringing a believer into relationship with a guide on the path of spiritual enlightenment. Literally translated from Arabic as “to sell,” the Islamic practice of bay’t is an oath of allegiance by “selling” one’s self in exchange for the spiritual guidance given by an Imam or spiritual leader. The tradition can be traced back to Muhammad who accepted bay’t of new converts to Islam as an oath of allegiance. When considered from this perspective, it is obvious that bay’t transfers religious authority—and associated symbolic capital—out of the hands of clerical and state officials and into the hands of communal spiritual guides. In many ways, such local guides challenge the basis of the sociopolitical order of state and clerics: they are diffuse and not centralized, they are disorganized and not hierarchically related, they have individual relationships with Muslims rather than mediating doctrine, and they rely on “irrational” practices rather than rational scholarship. It is not surprising that bay’t is devalued, if not rejected outright, by doctrinaire orthodoxy. The Ahmadiyya hold a bay’t ceremony during the annual gathering of the community in the UK when the Ahmadi Caliph of the time takes the oath of initiation from new converts (although there are also other national, and now televised, gatherings). Who can accept bay’t became an issue after Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s death in 1908 when a smaller organization known as the “Lahori group” split from the main body of the Ahmadiyya, partly on theological differences about the exact nature of Mirza Ahmad’s prophecy and how it was to be continued. Other differences between the groups were strategic: Ahmadi comportment toward non-Ahmadi Muslims, and organization of the community after Mirza Ahmad’s death. Many of these practices may be considered heterodox from the construction of mainstream Sunnism in Pakistan. But their practices cannot explain of themselves why the Ahmadis should be declared heretics in this unusual fashion over any other group that may even be more ideologically “deviant” from the Sunni majority norm in Pakistan or materially more marginal. There are numerous examples of deviance from around the world, but staying with South Asian Islam, the Zikris originating in Balochistan are notable. The Zikris follow Sunni Hanafi Islamic doctrines while emphasizing the classical and common Sunni orthodox practice of zikr, or remembrance of God. Most Sunni clergy in Pakistan and elsewhere see some practices in such zikr sessions, particularly those involving women,

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as heterodox, yet the community has never been officially labeled heretics (D. S. Ahmed 2002; Malik 2002:11 –12).


Backdrop to Ahmadi Persecution Although religious clerics challenged Ahmadiyyat since 1890, popular and political opinion in the early days was not all hostile to Ahmadis. The Indian Muslim League leader and founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, declared that all those calling themselves “Muslims” would be treated as such in the new Islamic nation and, specifically, that Ahmadis were to be considered Muslims for that purpose (e.g., in a statement in Srinagar, Kashmir on May 23, 1944). After Pakistan was formed in 1947, the Ahmadiyya leader at the time, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s son, led the community out of its birthplace in Indian Qadian to Lahore in Pakistan, and shortly thereafter to a new city on land purchased nearby by the Ahmadiyya. The new “Islamic” republic of Pakistan gave space to challenge religious claims, and in 1949, the militant Deobandi Sunni organization Ahrar mobilized its decades-old demand that Ahmadis be officially declared heretics. Some years after the Ahrar demand was unsuccessful, demonstrations in Lahore were organized by Jama’at-e-Islami, the leading Islamist political party, and these quickly became violent. The Lahore Riots of 1953 involved looting, arson, and murder of at least 200 Ahmadis, which eventually required three months of martial law over the city to be brought under control. The crisis was revived under the rule of Prime Minister Bhutto. Violence burst out once more in May 1974, with mass murder of Ahmadis and destruction of their properties across the country. Religious parties again demanded that the state hereticize the Ahmadiyya. The prime minister responded by convening a special committee comprising the whole parliament on June 30, 1974, to make a recommendation on the Ahmadiyya “issue.” Of course, the new crisis was not an isolated event. The earlier violence of 1953 had been simmering, alongside the ongoing persecution of Ahmadis. Lawmakers in 1974 (who had just drafted a new constitution the previous year) were conscious of this, and of the fact that the opportunity to hereticize the Ahmadiyya then had been missed—a point they made repeatedly in the 1974 debate. Furthermore, just a few years earlier in 1971, the Pakistani state had undergone an identity crisis. When denied its majority Bangla-speaking leader in the national elections, East Pakistan had seceded from Pakistan after months of bloodshed to become the new state of Bangladesh. This inherently challenged the Pakistani state’s identity as a homeland for Muslims in the subcontinent, prompting increasing pressure for “Islamization” to maintain the very rationale for Pakistan. As a result the country’s first constitutional amendment of 1973 was to add “Islamic” to the country’s official name “Republic of Pakistan,” indicating the ambivalent notion of religion and statehood in Pakistan (I. Ahmed 2010; Khan 2012). Finally, 1974 was a significant year for the Muslim world. Pakistan’s prime minister hosted the second summit of the Organization of Islamic Countries in February, effectively launching the OIC. Two months later, in April 1974, the


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Muslim World League (an international nongovernmental organization) held its annual convention in Saudi Arabia where 140 Muslim delegations passed a unanimous resolution declaring the Ahmadis non-Muslims. Although not legally binding, the declaration added significant momentum to the other factors in forming the context for the Pakistani committee of the whole parliament in August 1974.

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“Anti-Islamic Activities of the Qadiani Group, Lahori Group and Ahmadis (Prohibition and Punishment) Ordinance, 1984.”


The Second Constitutional Amendment and beyond Committee proceedings were held in-camera (no public gallery and confidential transcripts) from August 5 to September 7. The committee delivered a unanimous recommendation on September 7, 1974, for a constitutional amendment to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims, and the National Assembly and Senate approved it unanimously the same day. The Second Constitutional Amendment of Pakistan declared the Ahmadiyya be treated as non-Muslim minorities under law, invalidating Ahmadi claims to be Muslims. Informal persecution of the Ahmadiyya continued until, in 1984, the military President Zia-ul-Haq promulgated an Ordinance5 declaring most Ahmadi activities to be criminal offences. As a result, Ahmadis were barred from calling themselves Muslim, praying or preaching in the name of Islam, and exhibiting Islamic religiosity publicly—for example displaying Islamic symbols or Quranic verses, distributing Islamic literature, using the kalimah, and calling their places of worship “mosques” (Friedmann 2003:xiii –xv; Mahmud 1995; Saeed 2007; Siddiq 1995; Valentine 2008). Those accused of “posing” as Muslims can be charged with blasphemy, which, under Pakistani law of the same time, is maximally punishable by death. This has fed waves of public violence against Ahmadis, apparently condoned by religious authorities and even by state officials (Al-Islam 2013; Idris 2008; Tanveer 2013; Yusuf 2012). The symbolic violence also led to structural discrimination: Ahmadis were not only barred from holding the office of President or Prime Minister, but were also forced to vote in elections only for reserved minority seats, along with other non-Muslim minority populations in Pakistan. Being avowedly Muslim, the community boycotted this categorization, leading to their disenfranchisement (electoral changes in 2002 have not changed this situation; see Amir 2002; Sultana 2014). The amendment also left Ahmadis open to the persecution that nonMuslims in Pakistan routinely face (Ahmad 2012; Mahmud 1995; Malik 2002). A decade later, the so-called Blasphemy Laws effectively made the everyday religious practice of Ahmadis illegal and subject to a death penalty (Friedmann 2003:xiii –xv; Valentine 2008:230). This has led to unprecedented structural discrimination and popular persecution of the approximately five million Ahmadis still in Pakistan. Many Ahmadis emigrated from Pakistan, including their spiritual and organizational head [Caliph], and at least five million now live elsewhere.

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DOXA TO DISCOURSE TO ORTHODOXY IN 1974

Religious Heterodoxy: Finality of Prophethood The finality of prophethood in Islam is obviously one doxic element that erupted into popular and political discourse in 1974. This theological issue predates the Ahmadiyya. As Friedmann (2003) shows, despite popular opinion today, temporal finality of prophethood was never the only interpretation in Islamic scholarship nor was it necessarily the earliest, and “there was no unanimity in the understanding of the phrase kha¯tim al-nabiyyı¯n in the early centuries of Islam” (2003:64).6 Numerous individuals are reported to have claimed prophethood throughout Islamic history, but an evolving Sunni doctrine roundly rejected such claims or their acceptance. Over time, this has translated into further distance from the Shi’a (who believe in a spiritual, albeit nonprophetic, lineage after Muhammad) and related sects who believe in a continuation of nonprophetic spiritual guidance for humanity in all ages (like the Ismail’is). In this case, the emergent orthodoxy expressly united Shia and Sunni elements against the 6 Friedmann (2003:56–59) points out four instances of early (ninth to tenth century) commentaries that allow for prophethood after Muhammad, including traditions related to Muhammad’s son who died in infancy. Drawing on Goldziher’s (1971) Muslim Studies, Friedmann suggests that emphasis on temporal finality might well have been “part of an anti-Shi’i trend designed to undermine the hereditary character of spiritual dignity” (2003:61).


The proceedings of the special committee obviously constitute an extraordinary space of discourse. It was a field battle over proto-typical symbolic capital: naming who is and is not a Muslim and, therefore, who has proprietary rights over the use of symbols generally regarded as Islamic. This is a symbolic field in Bourdieu’s sense of being a distinct arena “where specific forms of capital are produced, invested, exchanged, and accumulated” (Swartz 1996:78). From this perspective, symbolic violence is not incidental to the 1974 declaration of heresy against the Ahmadiyya; it is the crux of the matter. The most striking feature of the symbolic struggle is that rationales to declare Ahmadis heretics are not restricted to their doctrinal deviance. The question of why Ahmadis, in particular, should be singled out for official hereticization in Pakistan hinges on more than theological difference. In fact, the unusual discourse established three levels of heterodoxy of the Ahmadiyya: (a) theological (finality of prophethood), (b) political (institutional competence to deal with religious views), and (c) humanist (the role of international norms in national law). Before discussing these, it is worth commenting briefly on the fact that the transcript contains no dissenting voice on the amendment. Not one parliamentarian opposed the amendment. However, the absence of contesting views does not mean that there was no political field struggle. Rather, the parliamentarians debated the nature of the amendment in line with particular interests and to protect against any potential challenges to their authority.


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Ahmadiyya. For example, interrupting a member’s speech, the Speaker of the National Assembly said: Our discussion should be confined to the Resolution before us; not that one is Sunni and one is Shia. We should not talk against any sect. That is not relevant. . . . We are not here to throw mud at each other; the only thing is to declare a minority. (Committee Chairman, Pakistan 1974:2710)

If the majority of the members of an Assembly is empowered to decide upon the religion of any sect or denomination merely by virtue of the fact that they constitute the majority, then such a view will also be untenable on the basis of reason, and contrary to human nature and religious conscience. (M. N. Ahmad 2003:4)

As a result of the doxic eruption into discourse, a certain Sunni orthodoxy comes to be defined in the 1974 proceedings in a contradictory relationship with the Ahmadi heterodoxy. The orthodox expression is that an individual can only 7 This was an integral part of the proceedings, distributed to members but also published separately in Urdu and English by the Ahmadi community. However, it was not included in the final printing of the proceedings as declassified in 2010.


The Ahmadi challenge to the theological field drew on its own tradition of authenticity, citing interpretations from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Islamic scholarship that supported the Ahmadi claim. In 1974, the heterodoxy erupted into public display as a challenge to the common notion of temporal finality of prophethood in Islam and hence to the (Sunni-dominated) sociopolitical order that sustains it. Openly in the field of discourse, the heterodox challenge is debated for the first time publicly in 1974 as a matter that can be argued “rationally,” decided legally, and applied universally. The violent crisis in the summer of 1974 in Pakistan is referred to numerous times by parliamentarians in the proceedings as justifying a “final” resolution of this matter. For instance: “At this time we have reached such a sensitive juncture that the eyes of the whole world are on us, the eyes of Muslim countries are on us, all Muslim governments and Arab governments are looking at us and waiting for our decision” (MP Ch. Ghaus Hazarvi, Pakistan 1974:2836). (This presumed universalism is at odds with the national exceptionalism relied on; see below.) Once taken out of the hands of God on Judgment Day and put into the hands of parliamentarians here and now, the matter becomes subject to the appropriate rules of discourse: rationality and majority of opinion. The leader of the parliamentary charge against the Ahmadiyya, Mufti Mahmood, draws on a sample of fat’awa [clerical judgments] to argue that the “entire Muslim world” is of the opinion that Ahmadis are heretics and that this is a decisive factor (Pakistan 1974:1969–74). On the other side, Mirza Nasir Ahmad points out in his opening statement (Mahzarnama [Memorandum])7 that this sort of step stemming from sectarian riots is unprecedented and would require that all sectarian riots be treated likewise:

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Appropriate legislative and executive measures should be taken so that the danger of foreign influence adversely affecting the interest of the State of Pakistan, arising out of the organization and membership of Ahmadiyya Missions in foreign countries would be effectively safeguarded against. . . . Government should set up an organization whose duty it should be to propagate the basic articles of the faith of Islam, particularly the concept of Finality of Prophethood. (MP Malik M. Jafar, Pakistan 1974:2663 –67)

The 1984 blasphemy laws and their application ( primarily against Christians and Ahmadis) did provide this continuity.9 They established an expanding fortress to protect against future heresies on temporal finality of prophethood and have been used also to promote persecution of Shi’a sects like the Ismailis. These sects might never be declared heretical, but the public discourse succeeds in establishing a wide frontier of orthodox opinion to protect the existing censorship of Ahmadis. 8 There has been no discussion on how this would affect the status of saints in Islamic history, including those revered in Pakistan, who made similar proclamations (see footnote 6). 9 Some antiblasphemy laws existed in British colonial India, and Pakistan adopted more in 1953. Up until 1986, courts heard eight blasphemy cases. Recent reports suggest that courts have heard up to 1,335 cases between 1987 and 2012, although the figure may be more (Asia 2014). A 2011 Pew poll showed that 75 percent of Pakistanis supported the blasphemy laws (Sahgal 2013). The same poll showed that about half of Pakistanis now believe that Shias are not Muslim, as opposed to 14 percent of Afghanis holding that opinion (Bell 2012:88).


be called “Muslim” if s/he acknowledges the finality of prophethood, and that this must be taken as literal and temporal, allowing no alternative interpretations.8 The transcript includes some theological debate. However, a large portion of the discussion has to do with practices. The Attorney General and other members repeatedly emphasize Ahmadis not joining in prayers at “Muslim” funerals (e.g., Pakistan 1974:239, 367) and not allowing Ahmadi women to marry non-Ahmadis (Pakistan 1974:220 – 21). Similarly, Ahmadi doctrine of Inner Jihad goes theologically unchallenged. However, the parliamentarians repeatedly criticize the Ahmadi practice of refusing armed resistance against colonial rulers and apparently supporting the British against the Ottoman Caliphate. Similarly, the Attorney General spends considerable time questioning M. N. Ahmad as to the numbers of Ahmadis in the country and worldwide, and about average numbers of annual conversion (e.g., Pakistan 1974:18 – 19, 28– 35, 116 –18). M. N. Ahmad contends that he has no such statistics since Ahmadiyyat is a matter of taking bay’t, which is not always recorded, and because an Ahmadi can leave bay’t at any time. By virtue of being argued rationally in the public sphere, the new discursive element of “normal” Muslim belief and practices is also institutionalized. Such institutions are already promoted in the 1974 proceedings, indicating a felt sense of protecting the institutionalized and codified orthodoxy:


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Political Heterodoxy: Authority of the Nation-State The second order of heterodoxy opened in the field is that of political legitimation. The Attorney General repeatedly seeks to vest authority with the parliament to decide on whether a community may or may not be called Islamic (e.g., Pakistan 1974:37 – 41, 96 –98, 122– 24). This is not only with respect to the amendment at hand but also as a principled matter. For instance, he suggests that the state is empowered to investigate the “true” religion of an individual as opposed to the one he may profess when it comes to religious minority quotas or preventing non-Muslims from entering Mecca (Pakistan 1974:44 –52, 95). Numerous statements by the parliamentarians reinforce this point. For example: You [M.N.Ahmad] have criticized extensively the authority of the Assembly [ parliament], but you should know that the Assembly is the representative body of the nation. It has to represent the nation. When the nation has a unanimous demand, it becomes the demand of the Assembly itself and enters the domain and duty of the Assembly . . . so how can the National Assembly, whose duty is law-making, not have the authority to expose the false claims of the Mirzai’s and save the nation from their fraud. (MP Maulana Abdul Hakim, Pakistan 1974:2352 – 53)

The sense of nationhood developed in the discourse includes sovereignty achieved by armed struggle against “infidel” (colonial) rule, and hence the ardent opposition to the Ahmadi view on inner Great Jihad (e.g., Pakistan 1974:2718, 2744, 2829, 2912, 2622).


Political movements to “defend” the finality of prophethood only came into existence after Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s claim to prophethood. For instance, the Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam (or Ahrar), which first raised the matter of Ahmadi hereticization in Pakistan in 1949 and was active in the 1974 riots, was itself founded in 1929 to counter the growing presence of Ahmadis in British India. The Tehreek-e-Khatm-e-Nabuwwat [Movement to Protect the Finality of Prophethood] had also been founded in 1889 precisely to counter and contest Ahmadi claims. One of the movement’s leaders, Mufti Mahmood, was the primary draftsman of the statement against Ahmadis in 1974, shortly after he had been chief minister of a Pakistani province. Mufti Mahmood’s political career after 1974 built on his successful rhetoric against Ahmadis. Even the fat’awa that he and others draw upon in the proceedings are given specifically in opposition to Ahmadiyyat, although of course there are also some religious judgments on temporal finality of prophethood before the nineteenth century. However, the understanding of finality of prophethood as temporal came to be institutionalized in Pakistan only after 1974. The violent popular reaction to the Danish cartoons incident in Pakistan (e.g., Blom 2008), as well as their apparent endorsement by the state, may also be understood in this light. Eventually, a nongovernmental organization now called the International Council for the Defense of Finality of Prophethood came into existence to police the Ahmadis. Pakistani members and politicians play a central role in this international body, and the group received active police support in desecrating Ahmadi graves, disfiguring shops, and burning literature (T. Ahmad 2012).

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M. N. Ahmad repeatedly contests this. The heterodox choice made by the Ahmadis is that governing officials have neither the competence nor the authority to declare what may or may not be Muslim: [A]s far as conducting the day to day affairs of this world is concerned, no individual or denomination can be empowered to expel an individual or a sect from the larger corpus of Islam. It is a matter between a human being and God, and it can only be resolved on the Day of Judgement. (M. N. Ahmad 2003:19)

When this question arose soon after the 29th of May, no one could even have remotely imagined that this august body would be burdened with the onerous task of resolving a highly complicated and intricate issue involving religious sentiments of millions of Muslims in the Sub-continent and all over the world. Today, it is the victory of democracy and the democratic institutions and democratic norms and traditions. (Abdul H. Pirzada, Pakistan 1974:3072 – 73)

This cognitive opinion later enabled military President Zia-ul-Haq to pass the 1984 Ordinance—the set of legislation collectively known as “blasphemy” laws. The Ordinance detailed activities prohibited by Ahmadis and defined punishments for the accused of life imprisonment or death (the former was struck down subsequently by the Federal Shari’at Court). The ordinance practically allowed persecution of Ahmadis and legal cover for those violating Ahmadi life and property (Valentine 2008:230). 10

This argument illustrates Bourdieu’s point that one strategy actors use is to critique the seemingly accepted rules of the field, or even the field itself, to gain strategic advantage.


The Ahmadi choice is to question the assumption that state and religion are entwined, even in a country ostensibly founded for Muslims. That is, M. N. Ahmad argues for a principled separation of religion and politics, and not just in this case.10 In order to clarify his claim, M. N. Ahmad distinguishes between political and theological senses of being Muslim (e.g., Pakistan 1974:149 –51). He argues that the former is confirmed by virtue of selfdeclaration: she who calls herself a Muslim is a Muslim, and no other person or group of people can contest this. The latter is confirmed by God and, again, no person or group of people can enter into that judgment. Furthermore, M. N. Ahmad’s statements highlight the positionality, as opposed to neutrality, of religious scholars and experts on whom the parliament relies. In the process of opposing this choice, the orthodox position congeals over the proceedings into a more or less definite statement that such distinctions will not be sustained, and that the state has the right to investigate the nature of belief of any citizen. The right of the state to define who can legitimately use Islamic symbols is brought out from amorphous background understanding into a codified, cognitive rule in the 1974 proceedings. Future application of this opinion is already sensed, as evident from the closing speech of the Law Minister:


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This is the first and most basic difference between Mirza’is [Ahmadis] and Muslims. Muslims only want to make their decisions in light of the Quran and Shari’a [Islamic law and moral code]. And think of these themselves as the basis of life. But Mirza’is look to the United Nations, sometimes to international organizations and sometimes to man-made constitutions and law. (MP Maulvi Abdul Hakeem, Pakistan 1974:2349)

The emergent orthodox assumption is that “tradition” is a valid ground for national particularism and exceptions to universals. The heterodox claim of Ahmadis that this is not so clearly challenges the sociopolitical order. This frequent argumentation is, of course, a discrepancy with a common justification cited for entering this debate in the first place: that of international Islamic expectations for a “final” resolution, as seen above. It is not the purpose of this analysis to claim that such arguments against the universality of human or religious rights were never broached before. However, the 1974 proceedings were the first time that these were used as valid rationales in making a case for new legislation. Using principles of trademark and intellectual property law, the rationale of the Attorney General hinges on religion as a legal “brand” similar to that of a company manufacturing soap (Pakistan 1974:76–78). Heterodoxy is equated with a “person falsely trading in some one’s name” (Pakistan 1974:80). This matter became central to the judgments against Ahmadis in at least two subsequent legal cases.11 Once more, the 1974 proceedings institutionalized parliament as the determinant of what can be considered exceptional in Pakistan, in contradiction with rights 11

M. Rehman v Government of Pakistan, 1985 (Khan 2003); and Zaheeruddin v State, 1993—where orthodox Islam was likened to Coca-Cola’s unique bottle design (Siddiq 1995).


Humanist Heterodoxy: Applicability of Religious Rights The third heterodox claim of the Ahmadiyya in the proceedings is the further choice that the Pakistani nation-state not be seen as bounded, closed, and particular. In frequent references in the Mahzarnama and in the proceedings (e.g., Pakistan 1974:38, 86, 88, 123 –25, 129), M. N. Ahmad refers to the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, especially the clauses related to freedom of religion. His point is that parliamentary deliberation or decision on such an amendment amounts to “contravention of basic human rights. . . . It would violate the United Nations’ Charter of Human Rights” (Ahmad 2003:8). By contrast, the Attorney General goes to lengths over the course of questioning to establish that all international principles and agreements are subject to national particularity, giving numerous examples such as of Indian law forbidding the slaughter of cows (Pakistan 1974:81), the United States forbidding polygamy despite Mormon beliefs (Pakistan 1974:85–86), and Britain forbidding public nudity despite “hippy” practices (Pakistan 1974:90). As he points out, “All these examples were simply meant to show that freedom of religion, as given, is subject to restrictions and it may be by law” (Pakistan 1974:95). The similar position of parliamentarians is captured in the majority statement signed by parliamentarians:

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A resolution condemning honour killings was proposed by a member of parliament, but according to Jilani [human rights lawyer and activist], it was withdrawn. “The senate refused to debate the resolution, with some members of parliament saying that it was part of our culture.” (IRIN 2003)

DISCUSSION Kurtz (1983) was correct that heresy is marked by a haunting nearness yet remoteness from orthodoxy. However, this theological distance is a necessary but insufficient condition for state-sanctioned exclusion of a religious community. Qualitative discourse analysis of the 1974 parliamentary speeches in Pakistan reveals that the interpretation of “finality” of Prophet Muhammad was a key trigger for the censorship, but it was not the only one. The declaration of heresy must be seen as a combination of three heterodoxies in the context of an unusual crisis of the state in Pakistan: theological difference, the authority of the modern state structure (parliament and select clerics) to determine legitimate use of Islamic symbols, and the particularity of a nation-state to draw on “tradition” as an exception to universal principles such as of human rights. The latter heterodoxies were integral to the state’s exclusion of the Ahmadiyya by creating an exceptional category of “heretics.” Bourdieu’s idea that heterodoxy challenges the existing sociopolitical order is borne out in the arguments used by parliamentarians to challenge these three Ahmadi heterodoxies. As Bourdieu postulated, orthodoxy emerged as “straightened” opinion from amorphous doxa. In each case, the position taken by M. N. Ahmad in the proceedings pushed the doxic boundary to establish a challenge to the political order. Again, the Ahmadiyya did not voice these challenges ex-nihilo; each argument by M. N. Ahmad was sustained by reference to sound tradition, so the line between doxa and discourse is not quite as impermeable as Bourdieu depicted. The field battle in 1974 was in large part about amassing symbolic capital to legitimize the use of Islamic symbols. State involvement meant that emergent orthodox opinion was codified and institutionalized, hence sustaining control of symbolic capital and changing the political field in which future actions take


generally deemed universal. This institutionalized step was justified by foreign legal examples, setting a codified precedent that could be drawn upon later. The state’s symbolic rights now included determination of a citizen’s religion, reliance on particular forms of clerical authority in state affairs, and cognitive arguments for punishment over “false” appropriation of Islamic symbols (leading eventually to death for “blasphemy”). Ongoing persecution of the Ahmadiyya centers on symbolic capital, with bans on the community’s literature and use Islamic epithets or symbols. In September 2013, for instance, police tore down towers at an Ahmadi place of worship (which cannot be called a “mosque”) since they resembled minarets (Tanveer 2013). Likewise, Pakistani parliamentarians have justified so-called honor killings of women by local community members in the name of tradition (Correspondent 2010). As the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on its web site:


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CONCLUSION This paper illustrates the importance of shifts within the category of religion in society by focusing on how heterodoxy becomes heresy. It argues that there was nothing theologically or historically deterministic about why Ahmadi heterodoxy became a constitutional “heresy,” while other choices deviating from Sunni clerical authority remain “heterodoxies.” Yet, there is some analytical unity in the process of this category shift. The paper further suggests that accounting for symbolic violence might enrich other empirical analyses of statesanctioned religious exclusion by bringing in otherwise ignored heterodoxies. Now, crises of the magnitude of 1974 related to the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan have not yet burst out in any other part of the world, nor has the community been constitutionally declared heretical by any other state. This may be explained by the fact that similar crises, contextual factors, and related heterodoxies have not yet erupted into unusual discourse elsewhere. But the Ahmadiyya hereticization in Pakistan in 1974 quickly became a widely cited model for anti-Ahmadi movements in other nations.12 There is thus ample potential for 12

For instance, the very same year in Jordan, and two years later in Mauritania and Saudi Arabia (Friedmann 2003:44).


place. But what Bourdieu overlooked was that the state’s involvement is crucial. As Driessen (2014:375) shows, state regulation of religious behavior in the Muslim world can criminalize sin by “closing off options for religious choice and socializing children into a national religious identity.” The state was central to the definition of a category of “heresy,” opening up structural and popular discrimination of the Ahmadiyya as well as other communities such as the Zikris or, increasingly, Shias. Thus, for instance, over the past 40 years, at least two generations have been schooled (by textbooks) and socialized into an un-reflexive belief that Ahmadis are non-Muslims, compounded by Ahmadi “silence” since their response is illegal. It remains crucial to further investigate to what extent communities and networks of authority require the state to perform exclusionary actions of this nature, and how the nature of the state makes a difference in such actions. Bourdieu also proposed that orthodoxy as “straightened” opinion seeks a (impossible) return to the state of “innocence.” The 1974 proceedings built a primordial authenticity of the majority in that the Assembly sought to equate Sunni majority with doxic unanimity. But of course, this is never possible since what has been said and argued can never be unsaid and un-debated. What Bourdieu’s insight suggests, and the Ahmadi case supports, is that heresies lead to continuing suppression to present the majority as unanimity. Once an assumption has become a choice, moving from unanimity to majority, this opinion must be maintained cognitively and with the strength of majority. Otherwise, its very rationale as contradictory to the choice becomes questionable.

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the theological heterodoxy of the Ahmadiyya to be officially censored elsewhere. Irrespective of that, the 1974 parliamentary discourse also indicates two related orthodoxies. Both may be widely observed in Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere, all of whom share similarly modern state apparatuses and nationalist religious discourse. It remains to be seen whether precisely these heterodox challenges and orthodox responses lead to similar results elsewhere, or whether different orders of heterodox challenges can also result in a declaration of heresy. Either way, this opens up a new empirical agenda for the sociology of heresy in Muslim-majority states and elsewhere. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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This research was conducted while on fellowship at the University of Tampere’s Institute for Advanced Social Research, and the support of the Institute and feedback from its members are greatly appreciated. The author would also like to thank Dr. Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir, Dr. Durre S. Ahmed, Major (r) Shahid Ahmed, Dr. Ville Vuolanto, Dr. Pia Vuolanto, and members of the Tampere research group for Cultural & Political Sociology for valuable comments on an earlier draft. The paper also benefited from discussions with students of REL3035S (2014) at the University of Cape Town, and the author is grateful for that engagement. Four anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of SOR provided extensive and insightful input on earlier versions, and their input has improved the paper greatly.


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