The following sections will examine in greater detail each of the issues talked above. Whether it is the sectarian violence, or the Pakistan army’s inability to surgically remove the spectre of Islamic militancy and terrorism without bludgeoning the people into submission, or even the political failure in reinstating people’s faith in the state institutions, each contribute to the lack of peace and stability in the state of Pakistan. In the process, the country remains the global epicentre of turmoil.
Sectarian Battles
The Barelvis are the more superstitious, but also more tolerant, amongst the entire subcontinental body of interpretations of Islam. The Deobandis consider the latter guilty of introducing “innovation” into the religion (Bid’at) and having deviated from the “true” path—the path of Sunnah. They call the Barelvis “grave worshippers” for aspects of the latter’s exotic religious practices. The austere nature of the Deobandi form of prayer militates against such ostentation even though the Barelvi practices make them more inclusive, when the two are compared.
“¦the Deobandis were represented in the polity by the breakaway Pakistan faction of the Jamaat-ul-Ulama-e-Hind, they also had the rump organisation Jamaat-ul-Ulama-Islami (JUI) since 1945, since before the partition of India.
The Barelvis had chosen early, along with the Shias, Ismailis and Ahmaddiyas, to side with the Muslim League for a separate Pakistan, dividing British India. The Deobandis, on the other hand, had a broader goal of turning Hindus to Islam. Hence, they wanted to stay in independent India.
But soon after the formation of the state of Pakistan, the elite understood that they could not Islamise the country with the help of the Barelvis. Considering that the Deobandis had widespread influence on the educated Muslims of the subcontinent, many of their followers also constituted the ruling elite of the new country. They dominated the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the army.
While the Deobandis were represented in the polity by the breakaway Pakistan faction of the Jamaat-ul-Ulama-e-Hind, they also had the rump organisation Jamaat-ul-Ulama-Islami (JUI) since 1945, since before the partition of India. But, the latter had fallen into bad times till a charismatic leader, Maulana Mufti Mahmud, arrived on the scene. The new leader even opposed the rise of the military general, Ayub Khan, to political power because he sought to bring modernist influences in Pakistan’s polity and society.
Maulana Mahmud won a parliamentary election in 1963 as an independent, under Khan’s Basic Democracy model, and registered JUI as a political party. In Parliament, for the first time, he argued in favour of higher allocation for the madrassas in east and west Pakistan as he said that it would enhance national interest by increasing understanding and lead to the codification Islamic law.
Maulana Mahmud argued in favour of higher allocation for the madrassas in east and west Pakistan as he said that it would enhance national interest by increasing understanding and lead to the codification Islamic law.
In the general elections held after the ouster of Ayub Khan in 1970, the JUI won its largest number of seats in the North West Frontier Province (now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) and the second-largest tally in Balochistan.
But they really did not come into their own till General Zia-ul-Haq gained power in Pakistan. The depth of the changes that the military dictator brought to the state of Pakistan can be understood from a change he introduced into the Pakistan army’s war cry. Earlier, the commandos of the army would launch themselves into operation shouting Nara e Haidary—ya Ali (Call the name of the lion—yes, Ali) to Allah hu Akbar (God is great).
The politics of the change can be understood from the fact that Ali is considered the biggest warrior of Islamic tradition. But he was also the eighth Imam of the Shia sect. So, he was discarded by Zia’s army—despite the martial background of the call—in favour of a direct invocation of god, making it the Muslim god’s own army. The subtlety of the move—yet its enormous significance—eliminating the Shia influence, was not lost on the Sunni Deobandis.
They really flourished soon after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. As enormous amounts of money from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia poured in for organising the anti-Soviet insurgency, the Deobandi clerics provided the spiritual guidance.
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