Ideologically Adrift

Bhutto’s Islamic Socialism

The task of defining this new narrative fell to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto—the first civilian politician to rule Pakistan after nearly fifteen years of army rule.

Having formed the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) only four years earlier, Bhutto ascended to power on a populist platform embodied in the slogan ‘roti [bread], kapra [cloth], makan [house]’. Like his predecessors Bhutto had to wrestle with questions of Islam and ideology. Some contemporary commentators pointed out that the separation of East Pakistan had resulted in a more compact entity where Islam was presumably no longer needed to bind the state. Unity could have derived from a robust democratic process accommodating political and ethnic differences and looking toward ‘geological, geographic, ethnic, and historic grounds for regarding the Indus Valley and its western and northern mountain marches as a distinct national unit separate from the rest of South Asia.’ The Islamic parties, however, vociferously attacked Bhutto and his socialist ideology as a threat to Islam. Bhutto settled on the concept of ‘Islamic socialism’ as his defining manifesto to stave off his critics on the religious right and to create a new national narrative that promisingly leveraged core Islamic principles of justice, equity, and poverty alleviation to tackle a developing nation’s fundamental socio- economic challenges.

Yet with the passage of time Bhutto’s regime adopted a more conservative bent—a posture fuelled by his insecurity vis-a-vis the military and his authoritarian tendencies. Bhutto introduced a ban on alcohol and gambling and made Friday a non-work day. In 1974, unwilling to stand up to street protests by the Islamic parties against Ahmadis he supported a constitutional amendment that declared Ahmadis non­ 132Muslims. For the first time in the country’s history, a minister for religious affairs was appointed to the central cabinet. Eager to burnish his Islamic credentials, in 1976, Bhutto invited the Imams of the Prophet’s mosque in Medina and the mosque at the Ka’ba—two of Islam’s holiest sites—to visit Pakistan.

Bhutto’s Islamic orientation was also reflected in his foreign policy. In 1974, Bhutto hosted a major Organisation of Islamic Conference meeting in Lahore, reorienting Pakistan away from South Asia and toward the Middle East. Following India’s allegedly ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ in 1974, Bhutto launched Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, rhetorically declaring, ‘There’s a Hindu bomb, a Jewish bomb and a Christian bomb. There must be an Islamic bomb.’ In light of Pakistan’s unsettled border with Afghanistan that divided a restive ethnic Pashtun population between both countries, the Bhutto government also began to support two Afghan Islamist militias to gain leverage over Kabul on the border issue: Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-e- Islami and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami. The decision was to have far-reaching consequences. Both militias played a key role in the uprising against the Soviets.

Ultimately, Bhutto’s promise of Islamic socialism was compromised by narrower political and foreign policy objectives as he failed to fully realise a new and progressive national ideology. In the wake of rampant street agitation led by the Islamic parties in conjunction with elements in the military, General Zia-ul-Haq deposed him. It was Zia who would initiate the wholesale process of converting Pakistan to an Islamic state.

Islamisation of Pakistan

General Zia’s decade in power was a setback for a faltering democratic process and ushered in an era of religious obscurantism that affected every facet of domestic life and foreign policy. In his very first speech as Chief Martial Law Administrator after removing Bhutto from power, Zia, who was sincerely devout, described himself as a ‘soldier of Islam’ and spelled out his vision: ‘Pakistan, which was created in the name of Islam, will continue to survive only if it sticks to Islam. That is why I consider the introduction of Islamic system as an essential prerequisite for the country.’ As such, in contrast to Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, who saw Islam as part of an ongoing and overarching nationalist project, Zia saw 133Islam as part of a revolutionary process to overhaul Pakistan.

The domestic impact was manifold. Beginning with the Army, Zia, upon being appointed Army Chief by Bhutto, changed the slogan of the Pakistan Army to ‘Iman [faith], Taqwa [piety], and Jihad fi Sabil Allah [jihad for the sake of God]’. Officer evaluation forms included a box of comments on an officer’s religious sincerity. Proselytising groups such as the Tablighi Jamat linked to the Deobandi tradition enjoyed greater access to military officers and civil servants. Like his military predecessors, Zia cynically used the Islamic parties as a counter to his civilian political foes but also extended them unprecedented political patronage, initially appointing a number of Jamaat-e-Islami members to head key ministries. In the process, Zia also politicised other Islamic parties that had largely remained apolitical and empowered them. Along with separate electorates being introduced for non-Muslims, registration criteria that excluded most secular parties were introduced during elections.

Zia’s Islamisation also encompassed Pakistan’s judicial system. The government constituted provincial Shariat benches at the High Court level and an appellate Shariat Bench at the Supreme Court level tasked with deciding if any parliamentary law was Islamic or not and whether the government should change them. Particularly troubling was the introduction of the Hudood Ordinance based on a distorted understanding of Quranic injunctions and introducing punishments such as flogging, stoning and amputation (albeit punishments that the state never applied). The ordinance’s most controversial application was and remains the imprisonment of female rape victims on the grounds of adultery.

An effort was also launched to Islamise the education sector. In 1981, the University Grants Commission issued the following directive to prospective textbook authors: …. to demonstrate that the basis of Pakistan is not to be founded in racial, linguistic, or geographical factors, but rather in the shared experience of a common religion. To get students to know and appreciate the Ideology of Pakistan, and to popularize it with slogans. To guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan—the creation of a completely Islamicized State.

The underlying motive behind these various genuine and cosmetic ‘reforms’ was a moral zeal that animated Zia. Islam was no longer just an overarching ideology to harness to unify and to defend the state; it was the 134road to salvation. Decrying endemic corruption and economic ills in Pakistan in a 1979 interview, Zia stated: ‘In the last thirty years in general but more so in the last seven years there has been a complete erosion of the moral values of our society…. Islam from that point of view is the fundamental factor.’

Under Zia a similar moral zeal characterised Pakistan’s central foreign policy preoccupation in the 1980s: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During Zia’s rule, Pakistan became a staging ground for the war against the Soviet Union, which was characterised as jihad. In this effort, the Pakistani military leveraged the proxy Islamic groups it had backed since the 1970s, providing them with arms and financing in coordination with the US and Saudi Arabia, among other states. Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami, in particular, was a favourite of the Inter­ Services Intelligence (ISI), which spearheaded the covert operation in Afghanistan.

Ultimately, Zia’s goal in transforming a limited Islamist rebellion into a full-scale jihad was to extend Pakistani influence into Afghanistan in light of its historic territorial concerns, secure significant assistance by helping the US bleed its Cold War adversary, and allegedly ’to make Pakistan the source of a natural Islamic revolutionary movement, replacing artificial alliances such as the Baghdad Pact.’ ‘This would be the means,’ continued one of Zia’s confidants in describing his vision, ‘of starting a new era of greatness for the Muslim nations of Asia and Africa.’

In pursuing these strategic goals, the Zia regime with international aid systematically cultivated a virulent strain of Islamist ideology in Pakistan. The ISI made right-wing Islamic parties such as the Jamaat­e- Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam key partners in recruiting among the millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and students at religious schools or madrasahs—lionising those who volunteered as mujahideen fighting in the name of God. In the process, these parties developed extensive networks throughout Pakistan and deepened their influence.

Students from impoverished backgrounds at the madrasahs were taught an obscurantist understanding of Islam with no modern subjects, making them easy prey for their handlers. Meanwhile, Saudi and United States funding directly facilitated this indoctrination. From 1984 to 1994, for example, the United States Agency for International Development gave a 135$51 million grant to the University of Nebraska Omaha to develop textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings as part of a covert effort to inspire anti-Soviet resistance. Zia further opened Pakistan’s doors to volunteers from all over the world who participated in the jihad in Afghanistan and who established offices, raised funds, and issued statements on Pakistani soil. Pakistan became the epicentre of a global jihad movement.

Alongside this jihadi culture, Pakistan under Zia witnessed an unprecedented rise in sectarianism—once again triggered by both external and internal factors—which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Pakistan. Externally, in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran; the Khomeini regime began exporting its revolutionary message across the Muslim world. Neighbouring Pakistan became a battleground in a ’transplanted war’ between Iran and Saudi Arabia that sought to limit Shi’a influence—a struggle that violently played out among a hydra of sectarian groups. On one side was the Iranian—backed Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i- Jafria (Movement for the Implementation of Shiite Religious Law); on the other were Sunni extremist groups such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba, ideologically equipped with fatwas issued by Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan and India declaring the Shi’a as apostates. Sipah-e-Sahaba’s political demand was that the state should declare the Shi’a—15-20 per cent of Pakistan’s population—non-Muslims through a constitutional amendment, as done with the Ahmadis.

The cumulative effect of the Zia years in Pakistan was not just a wholesale Islamisation of the Pakistani state to varying degrees but also the explosion of a jihadi and sectarian culture in response to external forces that were nurtured for political and ideological reasons. It was in the throes of this period that Pakistan’s drift into extremism began.