Last month the Jamaat-i-Islami fielded a couple of hundred thousand of the “faithful” bang in the middle of Islamabad. This week the Dawat-ul-Irshad’s militant arm Lashkar-i-Tyaba demonstrated its armed might at Muridke on the outskirts of Lahore. Meanwhile, the Tableeghi Jamaat notched up a million strong assembly of “believers” at Raiwind, 30 miles from Lahore. A host of other “Islamic” parties and groups now adorn the bleak civil landscape of this country: among the leading Deobandi organisations may be counted both factions of the pro-Taliban Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam, the Harkat-ul-Ansar, Al-Akhwan, the Sipah-i-Sahaba and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. Among the Barelvis the top slots are reserved by the two factions of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Pakistan, the Sunni Tehreek and the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (Maulana Tahir-ul-Qadri). The Jamiat-i-Ahle Hadith is Wahabi. The Shias are represented by the Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan and its militant offshoot Sipah-i-Mohammad Pakistan.
The return to “Islamic roots” is palpable enough. But is it reassuring?
The Jamaat-i-Islami seeks an “Islamic revolution”. In the past, it was content to remain a fringe party not averse to sharing power with a military dictator (Zia ul Haq) or joining an Islamic electoral front (IJI) of middle-of-the-road parties like the Muslim League. In recent times, however, its new leadership under Qazi Hussain Ahmad has bid to stage a more independent and populist stance like the Rafah party in Turkey. However, even as it continues to advocate a democratic route to power, it may be noted that the Jamaat boycotted the last elections and is no longer shy of attacking the hierarchical structures of democratic society, including those in the armed forces, as being “elitist” and “un-Islamic”. The Jamaat is also avowedly anti-imperialist, which in post-cold war terminology means anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism.
The Dawat-ul-Irshad, Harkat-ul-Ansar, Al-Akhwan and Hizbul Mujahideen are more upfront. They are for armed “jihad” against all infidels, whether in Pakistan, India or the United States. They seek to undermine the foundations of institutional “democracy” wherever it exists, because they see it as a “secular”, “anti-Islamic” construct. Allied to their violent cause, but with an anti-Shia twist, is the Sipah-i-Sahaba.
The Tableeghi Jamaat insists that it is apolitical. But when pressed, its leading lights, who include many among the top businessmen, professionals, bureaucrats, generals and landlords of the country, make no bones about it. State power lies at their feet, they claim, it can be had for the asking. Most politicians, including presidents and prime ministers, are wont to bend the knee at Raiwind every year.
The other groups are all anti-state in the sense that the Pakistani state is not sufficiently “Islamic” from their point of view. Except for the Jamaat-i-Islami, which has refrained from demonstrating its armed might publicly in recent times, all are bristling with weapons and totally immune from the writ of the state. Indeed, the Pakistani state relies on their zeal to promote its foreign policy agendas and causes.
The call to Islamic identity has become particularly potent for several reasons. For one, there is the abject failure of Pakistan’s bankrupt Westernised elites to fashion any sense of democratic Pakistani nationhood among the diverse people of this country. Two, opportunist politicians, generals and bureaucrats have tended to clutch at Islam for purposes of reclaiming lost legitimacy and, in the process, conceded valuable space to the fundamentalists. Three, the failure of state-capitalism to provide jobs and upward mobility to the urban middle classes has created a sense of hopelessness from which a return to faith offers some fatalistic solace. Four, the unequal terms of treaty and trade dictated by the Christian West to Muslims in general and Pakistan in particular have become an acute source of wounded pride and a challenge to join in a clash of civilisations. This melting pot has been brought to a continuous boil by the exigencies of the organs of the Pakistani state whose raison d’etre is firmly embedded in an ongoing jihad to liberate Kashmir from the clutches of a historical enemy which is held responsible for the dismemberment of the country. This drift is building up into an almighty tidal wave.
Indeed, we are once again faced with the spectre of a prime minister who seeks to clutch at Islam to recoup legitimacy. The Shariat Bill is the proverbial inch which Nawaz Sharif expects to concede the fundamentalists in the hope of covering his flanks while he tries to fob off the Americans and ward off the threat from the mainstream democratic movement. But the inches are beginning to add up to yards and the fundamentalists are baying for more and more blood, as they have always done. The strategy is doomed to extract a horrible price not only from Pakistani civil society and state but also from a naive West which is desperate to put a gloss on it for its own opportunist ends. It is therefore extremely discomforting to learn that 75% of the American agenda for Pakistan is nuclear-related and 25% Bin Laden-cruise missile-oriented — a sure shot recipe for upheavals on a large scale.
Under these domestic and international cumpulsions — with the Pakistani prime minister exhorting vigilante action against opponents of the Shariah Bill and the Americans relentlessly pressing ahead with a nuclear roll back — Pakistan’s state and society are being primed to explode in a fit of rage and roguishness from which few citizens or nations are likely to be spared.