The MMA Offensive: three years in power, 2003-2005

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MNIA OFFENSIVE THE

Three Years in Power 2003-2005

BY NJUISH B IO II

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The MMA Offensive Three Years in Power 2002 to 2005 Published by ActionAid International - Pakistan 2006

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Acknowledgments: I am thankful to many people for supporting this report, and in greatest debt by far to Dr. Saba Gul Khattak, for constant feedback, as both friend and editor. For helping this report take form, thanks to Dr. Fouzia Saeed for giving the space for this research and her enthusiasm for it; to Dr. Rubina Saigol for her comments, patience and encouragement; and to Nasreen Azhar for the discussions and help with proof reading. I am also grateful to Nasir Zaldl for his assistance in chronicling and compiling news reports and to Anbreen Ajaib for coordinating the printing and Malik Hammad Ahmed for facilitating in its* design.

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C o n te n ts

F o r e w o r d ________________________________________ 1 S y n o p s is ________________________________________ 5 In tr o d u c tio n ____________________________________ 9 Parameters and methodology__________________ 10 F u n d a m e n ta lis m _______________________________ 16 Semantics, origins and expressions____________ 16 M u tta h id a M a jlis-e-A m a l_______________________25 Post elections 2002___________________________26 Evolution of right wing politics and answering strategies____________________________________29 Genesis of MMA______________________________35 Brothers in arms: alliance with and support of the military_____________________________________ 37 Why people supported them___________________ 46

The Woman Agenda________________________ 55 Social Ethos________________________________ 85 The Way Forward___________________________ 117 Postscript__________________________________ 126 End Notes__________________________________ 137 Appendix___________________________________ 139 Acronyms__________________________________ 148 Glossary____________________________________ 150

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THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Foreword Defining moments in history are frequently symbolized by events that indicate a turn of tide. The defining moment for the 21st century appears to be what has become known as 9/11. While 9/11 has not taken place in isolation sans histoiy and sans politics, it appears to have ushered in a new era. Samuel Huntington’s The Clash o f Civilizations (1993) in the post 9/11 world symbolizes the new paradigm that divides the world into the Western and non-western (read: Islamic/Muslim) worlds with one upholding freedom and the other supposedly advocating terrorism. This paradigm shift comes with an attendant change in discourse that in turn impacts the formation of new political realities. The repercussions can be seen in the continued and/or growing violence whether in Afghanistan. Iraq, or the threats to innocent people at airports and train stations in western countries. The case of Pakistan vis a vis 9/11 is unique. 9/11 appears to have divided Pakistan politically. While the federal government was quick to declare itself an ally of the United States, a frontline state in the war on terror, it also had to contend with the reality of an anti-American vote in the 2002 elections that resulted in the capture of power by the conservative religious six political parties* coalition, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), in Pakistan’s two provinces— the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. In addition, the MMA also became the leader of the opposition at the Center. Many analysts have tried to explain away the popularity of the MMA as a freak development shaped by Intelligence agencies at the behest of the federal government for it’s dangerous and dual game. They assert that at a time when there was a trend of dispersion in the mainstream political parties, the religion-based political parties (whose leaders never before managed to pray together behind the same Imam) suddenly coalesced into an unlikely and unforeseen alliance that triumphed over the weakened mainstream political parties. Therefore, they reassure the liberal

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progressive sections nationally and internationally that Pakistan has not descended into Talibanization and that the MMA is not a true reflection of neo-conservative religious trends in Pakistan's political structures. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the MMA victory has deeply impacted people’s lives in the Frontier province specifically and the country generally. This report tells us why we cannot remain smug about the recent developments on Pakistan’s political scene. It is critical to our understanding if we wish to make sense of the social change ushered in as a result of events following 9/11 at the local level through the rise of the MMA to power. For Nazish Brohi, the MMA’s attack on cultural symbols that denote the opposition and the West (sometimes distinctly different from one another) begins with the weak sections of society, most notably the marginalized groups: women and minorities. Since, these marginalized groups are neither homogenous nor powerful, it is difficult for them to present their case in a coherent well-articulated manner. In fact, it is difficult for such groups to piece together the different subtle and not-so-subtle processes through which their marginalization Is either maintained or exacerbated. This report is a critical key to understanding the almost routine incidents and events that are regularly reported in the press and discussed at civil society meetings. Although the violence involved in these incidents has become naturalized and in many instances justified under the banner of culture, law, religion or tradition, this report helps to put such developments and what we consider non-events ,lnto perspective. What makes the present study significant is the incisive analysis that it brings to what have become accepted norms and the manner in which Nazish Brohi highlights the implications of these events for women and minority groups. She explains how misogynist political and social discourses have acquired added strength due to the backing or silence of the provincial government. While many argue that the values

THE MMA OFFEN8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

that have surfaced are not new—these were embedded in cultural and social mores of the province and are merely mirrored now in official discourse, for Nazish Brohi there is a clear difference. Whereas, in the past these discourses circulated in society and were enforced at the personal level with some trepidation, as the government did not officially condone such acts, at present the provincial government lends its support to such acts by looking the other way or justifies these by relying upon different conceptual frameworks. Pointing out such paradigm shifts, Nazish refers to the cases of violence against women such as rape and honor killings, in response to which MMA ministers and leaders prefer to rely on the concept of uxdi (protector) at the level of the family rather than the state as enshrined by the penal code and absolve themselves of responsibility by asserting that it is up to the woman’s father/husband or brother to avenge the crime. As Nazish Brohi puts it, such stands privatize crimes such as murder, making them into private family issues rather than a crime against the state. The main issue for Nazish Brohi is not only that violence against women and other marginalized groups takes place but the new forms and permutations such violence has acquired with the support of governmental machinery. Thus what appear as sporadic acts of violence with socio-historical roots have acquired new patterns and increased frequency as well as newer and more antagonistic forms. For example, pointing to the resistance against women’s entry into the political arena, Nazish points to the case of a woman councilor who was stripped while local religious leaders instructed her to pray to God for Justice instead of ensuring that justice is meted out. Such trends serve to encourage rather than discourage vigilante action against women in the public sphere whether in the political, social or economic arenas. Nazish points out that these changes are well thought out and in the absence of economic or other successes, the women and cultural change front has been specifically targeted. This study is thus a critical contribution to understanding the implications and impact of the MMA in the Frontier province.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Given the dearth of serious analytical writing on the subject, Nazish Brohi's pioneering work is a first hand account of the repercussions of the rise of religious fundamentalism for the people of Pakistan. Although local media reports and some reports from human rights groups are available and have appeared In the local press sporadically, little medium and longer-term impact analysis is available. Therefore, the lens Nazish Brohi applies is a significant contribution to the (almost non-existent) available literature on the circulation of power in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province specifically and the country generally.. This report compels us to change the lens with which we view the world and acquaints us with the urgency of resisting the change that is imminent. It provides a sophisticated analysis and critique of right wing ideologies in countries such as Pakistan where any criticism of the right Is also taken to be an uncritical acquiescence to US domination. Making the distinction and arguing for creating a space where liberal democratic forces need not be hostage to the US or ultra religious alliances, this report forces us to think about important questions regarding the future of democracy, and the future of the state if the rise of right wing leaders and policies continues on both sides of the current divide, as the present trends indicate. Saba Gul Khattak

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Synopsis The idea of a human rights centered report on Islamist governments invokes sensational images stereotyped by mainstream western media. Tb straight off dispel with those, the demonic spirits of the Taliban have not taken over Pakistan, hands and feet are not being chopped off, women will not be whipped and stoned to death in public anytime soon, the typecast 'bearded turbaned hardliners’ are still a minority, happiness has not been outlawed, the Stone Age is still a historic era not a current reality, and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal [MMA] will probably not sweep the next elections. Why then this report? Because the MMA has fundamentally altered the political landscape of the countiy, not just by political machinations, but equally significantly, by aggressively aiming to change the cultural mosaic of society, and alter the nation's self-perceptions. In the October 2002 elections, MMA gained control of state power within the international context of the War on Terror which Muslims perceive as religious persecution, and domestically, under a regime that supported and ushered it into power while it contrived the atrophy of the two main populist political parties. Cresting the wave of outrage at the treatment of 'Muslim brothers in Afghanistan* and antiAmerican sentiment, in a defining moment, fundamentalism legitimately entered the political public sphere through claims of being the moral voice of a collectivity. Since this context was transient, the MMA needed to secure a longer term framework that assured the relevance of a religious alliance on the political landscape. It found the solution in creating and then

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

responding to a morality crisis. The MMA has posited moral corruption as the lynchpin of imperialist designs and as the crux of Pakistan’s current predicament. The domination o f Muslim societies is seen to have been achieved through the undermining of religion and culture, not through military or economic domination as nationalists and socialists have argued in the past. To consolidate power in the long term, MMA is seeking to create a cultural hegemony, so their strategy is essentially a cultural offensive. The religious right wing understands that their eventual across board relevance and endorsement in the country can be guaranteed if there is ideological reconstruction, because once they realign people’s aspirations towards the right wing’s Utopia, on its attainment, they will govern it. For that, the realm of culture is the essence of their politics, through which they can conquer in the battle for ’hearts and minds’. The State of Pakistan has picked up the gauntlet and answered with ‘enlightened moderation’ - identity politics and defining culture will increasingly become pivotal in Pakistan. Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal’s electoral victory of 2002 is a culmination of over fifty years of individual party and state efforts, the dividends of which are evident in the support for the Islamization agenda, irrespective of support for the political alliance in question. This time, people voted them into power and it was not imposed from above, and this has immense implications. They cannot be dismissed as a temporary phenomenon because unlike prior state led religiosity drives, this time it is a populist endorsement - and it is easier to fight against the State than it is to challenge society. The MMA has targeted the traditional repositories of culture - women - who are always identity markers; education; the media; cultural expressions; and have usurped history. The manifestation of these together constitutes people’s identities and sense of self. It is this that MMA is attempting and managing to change. This report tracks how.

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Pakistani society Is divided between the rich and poor, the urban and the rural, between ethnicities, sects and faiths, and across lines of gender. The rapidly widening income and developmental disparities are accelerating certain dynamics: the privileged classes have formed an (inadvertent?) nexus: the rural land owners and industrialists and the urban, educated, and by virtue of a neo-liberal education, west enamored, are expanding though simultaneously becoming exclusivist and insular, while the overwhelming majority remains disconnected to this ‘progress* and changing social norms and values. Because the former group dominates power, trade, economic and social policies, laws, media and public discourses revolve primarily around their issues. This is the political crisis that the people of Pakistan have been embroiled in for decades, and consequently are willing to explore any alternates that acknowledge them as stakeholders and bequeath them a legitimacy, language and means for challenging power, however limited its scope. The MMA is attempting to subsume these differences and engineer a more rigid and insidious polarization. They are using an ‘us vs. them’ rhetoric from their new position of influence to stifle egalitarian and democratic thinking. This strategy is meeting with success in face of the wider political scenario, where U.S President George Bush has globally institutionalized his myopic ‘with us or against us* mentality. For MMA, the ‘us* is the moral community of ‘pious Muslims’, who abides by their interpretation of religion, observes their rituals, defers to their dress code, shares their distaste of arts and culture. ‘Them* is everybody else, who then translate into ‘bad Muslims’ or ‘non-Muslims*. The debate shifts from being supporters of MMA as opposed to supporting the others, into choosing to be ‘saved* or choosing to be ‘damned’, into siding with heaven or hell. It’s the politics of stringent ‘othering.* The ‘other’ remains a shifting, nebulous entity. In Pakistan*s context, the politico-religious leadership has reincarnated itself continually in response to the external

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environs. Prior to Independence from British Raj, they were a radical phenomenon, fighting against imperialist forces, fighting even against the creation of Pakistan since it conceptually contained the Muslim nation to a geographical location. Post 1947, as the political right wing entrenched itself in the state apparatus, it appeared as a form o f traditional orthodoxy, obscurantist, insisting on ritualism, resisting change and reviled modernity, yet strategically allying itself to the US, a global super power. With this strategy, they fought against leftist forces and financially benefited from this alignment to maintain global status quo, while rallying for and ensuring domestic level conservatism. After 9/11, they are once more focusing on revivalism, talking of radical change and against traditional, corrupt leadership, against Imperialist designs of USA and its perceived ‘local marionettes*.

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The vote for MMA is primarily a utopian rejection of current political formations. MMA is a political alliance that was ushered into power in a political crisis, the nuances of which will change in the future. To entrench their transient support base and make their permanence relevant, the MMA has packaged Pakistan's political crisis as a religious and morality crisis, and are crafting policies to respond to this projection. I posit that the socio-cultural agenda, far from being used by MMA as a distraction from their political ineptitude, as commonly thought, is their central politics through which to attain political and economic mileage. Their persecution of groups at the margins of society is not random, in fact, is a precursor to their ambitions, strategically starting from the peripheries, moving inwards. If this continues to be seen by the rest as cosmetic subterfuge, rightwing extremism will further entrench itself in Pakistani society and have far reaching implications, irrespective of MMA’s electoral performance, irrespective of even MMA's survival as a political entity.

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Introduction

THE MMA OFFEN8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Introduction Parameters and Methodology I understand fundamentalism in society to have three trajectories, axes on which its rise may be gauged: the strength of politico-religious parties; informal societal institutions such as daawa and dors, rising prominence of mosque centers, media representations and assertions o f religiosity; and militancy and armed action in the name o f religion. This report focuses on ascendant fundamentalism in Pakistan, specifically as nurtured through political Islam. It examines how a political alliance, the MMA, has invoked religion to pursue its socio-cultural agenda, and in the process, is changing the weave of Pakistan’s societal fabric. It attempts to track how state power has been directly used, in departure from the past when it was a shadow force. This time, the MMA has an explicit, representational mandate, and whereas Islainization previously was always imposed from the top, this time it has endorsement from below - the electorate. It examines what this change has meant and how it has been used. The report does not address the rise in fundamentalism through non-political, non-state actors such as the Tableeghi Jamaat, the Al-Huda phenomenon, nor the nascent dors culture or contemporary televangelism1. It does not touch upon the impact of conventionally defined terrorism vis-a-vis A1 Qaeda or the War on Terror, nor does it reflect deeply on the jihadist culture and legions that have swamped the country, or the nexus between MMA and armed militancy, such as sectarianism and terrorism. 1Nasreen Azhar points out that these phenomena are a result o f Political Islam's successful propaganda. 1James Martin. Graxnscl's Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Macmllllan Press, 1998.

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While addressing political Islam's manifestation In Pakistan through a political alliance, the report does not address global political manifestations of Islam or the terrorism and militancy associated with it. These left out areas are crucial to understand the profile, nature and mechanisms of religious extremism in Pakistan, and though they have been written about to some extent, warrant further research. This report is a deliberate attempt to bring Into focus the corrosive effects of what is generally perceived as the more ‘benign’ form of religious orthodoxy in Pakistan - the organized political parties. For reasons of expediency, the subject matter has been confined to one overarching alliance, the MMA, which umbrellas six different organizations (See Appendix for detail). It has been written primarily for a Pakistani readership, assuming some prior understanding of the context of Pakistan's genesis and continuing evolution of state, politics and society. This report is not a chronicle of MMA actions, there is an attempt to contextualize developments historically and sociologically, relate to fundamentalist trends elsewhere observed, and posit arguments based on a personal, feminist reading of these, even when the analysis is in conflict with MMA’s stated intent. The data is primarily empirical evidence of MMA’s public posturing via the print media. The report did not depend on interviews with MMA activists, mainly because there is a gap between the rhetoric at the personal interaction level where rationalizations and ideal scenarios are given, and MMA's actions and statements in the public sphere, through which people perceive and support/oppose the alliance. The MMA stance in the public arena has been the focus, and because the most prominent public faces are Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and senior post holders in

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the MMA NWFP government, the report also draws on their actions and inactions. The information collected is analyzed through the lens of patriarchy, which I understand to be the operative framework for both, state and society in the country, as elsewhere in the world. I acknowledge that both, the data collection and its interpretation is colored by my views and experiences - in this sense, it is a subjective report., I use Antonio Gramsci’s framework of hegemony to understand MMA’s actions {and non-actions) and see a paradigm in MMA’s politics that focuses on preserving regressive aspects of society and culture, while crafting a particular type of change through which it seeks to gain long term political mileage. Hegemony is articulated by Gramsci as a process of domination by consent, a mode of social control through which one group exerts its dominance over others by means of ideology2 Coercion is domination by force while hegemony is engineered popular consent, generating conformism. The MMA is strengthening and protecting religious discourse as the only legitimate idiom of people’s articulation, through this consolidating power by projecting itself as the only valid lexicon, and reinforcing and invigorating patriarchy - a mascullnist dominion. For Gramsci, hegemony was an observation of the workings of a dominant group to keep status quo, whereas in this case it is the ambition of an ascendant group to bring a particular type of change. But there is no departure in its logic, because whereas the MMA comes together as a separate political entity confronting the state, it is ideologically a part of the dominant group that includes the state, that seeks to maintain hegemony of the two interlocked spheres of patriarchy and religious invocation. The MMA cannot be 2 James Martin. Gramsci’s Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Macmilllan Press. 1998.

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categorized as counter-hegemonic - It is not challenging any dominant ideology (class, religion, gender or other) and the political confrontations are struggles over power and strategy, not ideology. Muhummad Ayoob takes the example of Wahabiism in Saudi Arabia to show how it Is both, a pillar of status quo (when constructed from above) and a force subversive to status quo (when mobilized from below)3. Support for some groups of the MMA has class underpinnings in terms of support of the economically lower strata, but the report makes the point that this is just an attempt at capturing a particular vote base in a particular area. In other places, MMA also sides with the exploitative classes and strengthens capitalism where it is more politically expedient to do so, so they are not challenging class divisioning in society. Nor can it be claimed that they are contesting secularism as a dominant construct, as secularism is the preferred framework of a veiy few, and certainly not one that is adopted by any ruling regimes of Pakistan, past or present. So although Gramsci postulates hegemony as a strategy for maintaining capitalist domination, using the analysis to explain why the social revolution predicted by Marxism did not happen, it presents an apt framework for analysis of the MMA, the general aim of both being a a The initial social contract between the House of Saud and Wahhabis was that the former gave up control o f culture and education to the Wahhabi religious establishment in return for the latter’s endorsement, by means of religious edicts, of Saudi policies in the political, security, and economic spheres, resulting in a socially conservative and politically quletlst form of religion. But as extremist members of Sayyid Qutb's Muslim Brotherhood were given refuge in Saudi Arabia, they radicalized the marginalized sections o f society into political action, which then started challenging the Saud government on its Wahhablst credentials. For detail, see Muhummad Ayoob. Political Islam: Image and Reality, World Policy Journal, Vol. XXI, No 3, Fall 2004, accessed at http: //www.worldpolicv.org/loumal/artlcles/wpf043/avoob.htm

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transformation of subjective consciousness4, with the assumption that cultural change precedes, and is a prerequisite for structural transformations and consequent maintenance of them. Gramsci understood culture as a fundamental political project for the attainment of power, a strategy promoted by the MMA. The MMA, then, aims to change culture by selectively reinforcing and altering values and social structures that bind society together, such as morality, sexual restraint, marriage, tradition and conservatism - all of which collapse into the ‘women question*, authority, personal responsibility, patriotism, national unity, community, heredity, education, language, law and religion - all sites for engineering and maintaining hegemony. I have drawn on parallels different writers have made between political Islamists and other Ideologically grounded political actors in the global context. I have compared approaches of the MMA with contradictory, in fact, diametrically opposed groups, drawing on Marie-Amie HelleLucas* projection of them as the fascists of the modem world; used Olivier Roy’s comparison of the concept of ummat serving for political Islamists the same function as the proletariat did for leftist groups of the 60s; at the same time reproducing Mahmood Mamdanfs juxtapositioning of similarities between them and the neo-conservative capitalist hawks. Rather than considering this a convolution or confusion In my analysis, I use these paradoxical analogies not just to point to the MMA’s inconsistencies, but to underline a central point of this report. The MMA is not bound to moral or ideological constancy but to a strategy to acquire power, and are willing and able to draw from a vast repertoire of approaches to achieve this. This point Is highlighted again when I, while questioning the perception of a homogenous ‘Muslim world*, derive examples

4 ‘ Robert Cox: Gramsci. Hegemony and International Relations: an essay in method. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1983

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of similar efforts in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Malaysia, and Daghestan, despite the fact that political Islam varies greatly across all these locations. The MMA ideologues and policy makers are political strategists, not religious puritans

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Fundamentalism Semantics, Origins and Expressions The term 'fundamentalism* has been used here to refer not to people’s proclivity to religiosity, but to connote the usage of notional references to both Islamic sacred texts as well as Muslim tradition - held equally sacred - for inciting people’s passion for religion in service of perpetuating a social, cultural and political framework. For the purpose of this report, it is used interchangeably with the phrase Political Islam or Islamist Politics, and not for upholding the fundamental pillars of faith, even though it connotes there are some Muslims who believe in basic principles of Islam and some who don't. The term fundamentalism is a western rendition of political Islam, and not an expression Muslims have claimed for themselves. For this report, I acknowledge the use of the phrase is reductive, but it is used by default, for lack of a better encapsulating terminology and not because it captures the phenomenon perfectly. Many writers differentiate between political Islam as a political phenomenon and Islamic fundamentalism as a cultural phenomenon. I use both interchangeably to highlight that in the case of MMA, it is political Islam trying to create, perpetuate, permeate and steer a cultural phenomenon. The term ‘fundamentalism* has entered the vernacular in the past two decades as a general designation for revivalist conservative religious orthodoxy. Though originally applied only to Christianity, the extension of the term to other religious traditions dates from the time of the Iranian Revolution. Today it is also used to describe Evangelical Christians, Iranian revolutionaries, Hindu extremists, ultra­ orthodox Jews and militant Sikhs, among others. The most explicit association with the term fundamentalism is that with Islam.

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o r r e m iv B

Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Islamic fundamentalism has been problematized by three general groups: those associated with the western security apparatus, looking for an ‘enemy’; adherents of the modernity project for whom fundamentalists are the ‘other’; and feminists, because of the universality of patriarchy within fundamentalist movements and their outlook. The specific origin of the word fundamentalism dates to an early 20th Centuiy American religious movement. The movement took its name from a compendium of twelve volumes published between 1910 and 1915 by a group of Protestants entitled; The Fundarnentals: A Testimony o f the Truth. These volumes served as the concretization of a crossdenominational set of traditions with roots in previous centuries. It came to embody both principles of absolute religious orthodoxy and evangelical practice which called on believers to extended action beyond religion into political and social life. Four qualities: revivalism; orthodoxy; evangelism; and social action; are the basis of fundamentalism. These qualifications may be witnessed in revivalist Islam and political Islam, thus the extrapolation of the term fundamentalism, yet there are marked differences in evolution of the phenomenon in Christianity and Islam. Fundamentalist politics was spearheaded by clergy, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson In the USA. Development of political Islam on the other, has been pioneered by political intellectuals, not the religious ulema, such as Sayid Qutb and Hassan alBanna in Egypt, All Shariati In Iran, Muhummad Iqbal and Muhummad All Jlnnah In colonial India. Additionally, mainstream Islam has no institutionalized clergy parallel to state hierarchy, so the Issue of secularism has not been historically pivotal5. The MMA Is located on a global continuum of fundamentalism, its collective outlook that of revivalist * This is contested by Dr. Mubarak All in his book 'Ulema, Sufis and Intellectuals' where he traces the evolution o f the ulema, asserting there is an Institutional hierarchy In clergy as a class.

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movements through history, preoccupied with restoring past glory. In Islamist genealogy, this outlook evolved in response to expansionism and colonization of the world by Christian Europe at the time when Muslim empires were In decline. The simplistic assumption is that since Muslim imperial power existed at the time of early caliphates, when Islam was apparently practiced in its pure form, so going back to that pure form would ensure the imperial power once again. In their world vision, the causal link between revival of Islamic society and restoration of political power is firmly entrenched, so it is expected that triumph over ‘others’ and rewards of worldly power would materialize out of ‘purifying’ the socio­ cultural domain. To go back to past political power, they assume the need to recreate societies of the past, the constructed Golden Age of Islamic society. Despite the differences, connective veins run through all extreme ideological movements invoking religion. Characteristics of all faith based fundamentalisms6: • A conviction that the only solution is the return to a Golden Age, a time when the members of the movement or those they identify with were strong, vital and in control of the world: an ancient value system and society, that may or may not have existed, relying on an idealized, constructed past with selective application of its guiding principles while retaining modem technology • Seeing themselves as ‘chosen* and righteous harbingers of a Utopian future, presaging a time when movement members will return to that sense of group strength and wholeness. In seeking to do this, they adhere to a clearly specifiable orthodoxy, but no easily predictable political ideology, so the past and future (as in the Hereafter) matters, not the present

6 Combined and derived from Manar Hasan. On Fundamentalism in our land - Palestine, in Women Against Fundamentalism Journal No. 5. 1994, and Ghazala Anwar. Reclaiming Religious Centers from a Muslim Perspective, in Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights o f Women. Palgrave 1999

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•

•

•

• •

Abhorance for values of equality, asserting biological essentialism and superiority or ‘difference’ between men and women Propagating advantage of tradition over thought, and focus on morality, culture and sexuality for social control Aiming to take political action for conforming a country's law to religious doctrine, and are committed to activism for a changed social, political and legal order Asserting that the group and eventually the country need saving from secularism, and decry pluralism The "Clash of Civilizations" theory is the essential credo that all fundamentalisms share above and beyond any of their differences.

Yet the phrase fundamentalism, and the fundamentalist invocation of societies of the past also glosses over the newness of such movements. Many writers have pointed out how fundamentalism is a product of modernity. It also presupposes a homogeneity within fundamentalists, whereas their approach varies greatly, from the orthodox and traditional to the rigid and literal and to the radical and militant. Globally, fundamentalisms emerge in different forms. In contemporary mainstream discourse, it has been conflated with Islamic fundamentalism, whereas other religious fundamentalisms are not categorized as religious per se. For instance, Jewish extremism is seen as more political than religious, Hindu fundamentalism seen more as cultural revivalism, and the Christian siege mentality Is seen as a neoconservative economic / political ideology. As a response to cultural tension, fundamentalism emerges in the form of an orthodox restatement of cultural patterns. Iqbal Jafar questions whether “Revival of the pristine Islamic society is being sought for its spiritual blessing or for the expected temporal reward in shape of worldly power and influence?”7A 7 Iqbal Jafar, 'Face o f Islamic Revivalism*. Dawn.

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succinct answering point of Samir Amin: “They are political organizations whose aim is the conquest of state power, nothing more nothing less. Wrapping up such organizations in the flag of Islam is simple, straightforward opportunism.**8 Religious fundamentalisms, mirror totalitarian regimes in many ways9, in that both rise against the backdrop of a socio-economic crisis, accentuated by a severe crisis of expectation: both are characterized by hostility to culture and individual rights and focus on the poorer sections of society; exalt the moral values and culture of the disadvantaged to building feelings of superiority and persecution; both invoke the blessings of God in their endeavor, thereby wanting to eliminate opposition to it; and both regard women as the lynch pin of ideological perpetuation. In contemporary discourses, more so since the September 11 attacks on U.S.A, fundamentalism has become synonymous with Islamic fundamentalism and the Muslim world seen as a terrorist monolith10. The term has been used for trend analysis to make sense of what was happening in the ‘Muslim world’11. However, the term is problematic, as it was meant to connote return to the fundamentals of faith. 8 Samir Amin, Political Islam, Covert Action Quarterly No 71, Winter 2001. Washington DC. * Derived from Marie-Aimee Helie-Lucas, Women’s struggles and the Construction of Muslimness, in Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights o f Women, Palgrave, 1999 in popular Western media such as in Fox TV, USA Today and Washington Post, fuelled by writers such as Daniel Pipes. Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, among others. 11 Farida Shaheed challenges umbrella terms that are used, such as the 'Muslim world*. Confronting monolithic definitions, she characterizes the 'Muslim world* as "Amorphous, divergent, shifting composition o f individuals and societies not infrequently in conflict". She also points out that patriarchal structures and discriminatory practices attributed to the Muslim world are equally evident outside it. in secular countries and societies with other religions". Farida Shaheed, Constructing Identities - Culture. Women's Agency and the Muslim World, in WLUML Dossier 22-23. July 2001. In the same vein. The West' is equally an artificial construction, a reductive stereotype that refers primarily to the USA and to an extent, the UK with an Insensitive lumping of other, culturally and ideologically different countries with it.

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There are two frameworks within which Islamic fundamentalism Is conceptualized: one. In which the tenets of the religion are itself seen as problematic, in which case the issue is not the return to religion but religion itself. The different schools of thought and courses of action chartered across the ‘Muslim world* vaiy widely, each convinced of its rightness, each claiming to be the ‘true* way. The Islam of the Taliban was different from that of Malaysia, Nigeria distinct from Morocco, and then the 'high* Islam of purist Salaflsm and Wahabism separate from 'local* Islam of shrines, cantos and qaivwali Each can find in the sacred text its justification. What passages are cited give a better profile of the person citing it than the essence of the religion. It is evident then that to understand fundamentalism, it is more important to consider what people claim the religion says. The other, more common perception is problematizing the terrorism and militant action associated with Islam. This is then not a matter of religiosity but invoking religion in political discourses and actions. More often than not, the political discourses underlying fundamentalism get glossed over. The Imagery evoked globally by ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ irks most of the Muslim world. Many Muslims see a return to the fundamentals of faith as an integral part of their religious affiliation12 and feel forced to be apologists for it. It constrains secularists and feminists who feel pushed to choose between embracing this identity and distancing themselves from it completely, condemned to an either/ or position. Many others resent this extrapolation as it reduces spaces available for spirituality. The friction can be understood by tracking the international visibility and public profile of Islam in the West.

13 The five pillars/ fundamentals o f practicing Islam are; Belief in kalima fHiere is no god but One and Mohammad is His Prophet); Prayers (Five times a day); Fasting (for a month in Ramadan, month in Islamic calendar); Zakat (Charity); and Hajj (a pilgrimage to Holy Sites o f Mecca and Medina). The foundation of these is the Holy Quran.

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In recent times, Islam was not given much attention before the oil crisis of the 70s, after which it appeared to have taken the world temporarily hostage, with the Palestinian hijacking and the Egypt-Israel conflict. It appeared in public consciousness as ‘the threat to the American way of life*. After that, it had sporadic appearances In imagery of veiled women, narratives of Western women marrying Arab men and then fleeing their marriages with children in tow, the Islamic Revolution of Iran and women in chadors, the Iran-Iraq wars and torture and gassing of people. At the fringes of Western media was coverage of the Arab wars, interpreted as contemporary Nazism, the Palestinian cause understood at that time as rejecting the Jews* right to live. Then media coverage skimmed forward to Saddam Hussaln*s Invasion of Kuwait, escalating at the time of the Taliban, and then, of course, 9/11 and global jihad and the accompanying hysteria. Earlier exposure was Orientalism, Crusades and horror stories of Saracens. The ‘Muslim world* has been characterized as an emotive, violent, undisciplined, medievalist, and essentially irrational force inherently disruptive of the modem world and its progress. The way in which it entered the public sphere of discussion shaped how it was represented and how it was understood. The in between periods of fertile intellectual discourse, Muslim renaissance, Muslims' world visions were neither known nor understood, or seen as peripheral. The western input in the emergence and activation of this dichotomous worldview can be understood with the preoccupation with the ‘otherness* of Islam, through a refusal to link and contextualize such action, for example understanding terrorism simply as a state of Muslim mind, distancing it from outcomes of U.S. foreign and public policy. Political Islam is not the only the only site for mixing culture and religion. Internationally, the extremist actions of Jewish or Christian leaders sire not equated with Judaism and Christianity as a whole. Secularism seems to be contingent on the definition of the religion, as mixing of religion and politics in Israel, Eastern Europe and Latin America are not

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condemned and a comparable level of discrimination absent. But the other religious-political movements, such as the Moral Majority in the USA either emanate from Western societies, or like the Hindu manifestation of politicized religion, do not challenge western hegemony, in fact, accommodate themselves to it, whereas political Islam refuses to accept the current global distribution of power, and challenge the international status quo. Muhummad Ayoob13 points out that domestic regimes in many Muslim countries are shored up by the international structures, so the two are closely intertwined, and for political Islam, challenging one symbolizes challenging the other. Virulent anti-American feelings are widespread in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, where regimes are close allies of the USA. Resurgence of Islamist politics across the globe cannot be reduced to theological fervor. Globally, fundamentalism in all its shades appeals to people also because it appears to mediate destructive economic and social effects of neo-liberal policies, for instance in Malaysia, and as the Muslim youth led riots in 2005 in Paris showed; as an articulation of the rejection of imperialism and associated domestic power structures like in Iran and Saudi Arabia; as a form of ethnonationalist territorial struggles in Palestine, East Timor, Chechnya and Kashmir. The religious identity also congeals around racist attacks that render followers of the religion as victims, such as in the Balkans (Kosovo and Serbia) and Palestine. In the case of Palestine, Kashmir and Algeria struggles that were initially secular and nationalist - the treatment of Muslims garnered support of Muslims elsewhere, who experienced it as a collective subjugation, and domestically created the space for political Islam to become the dominant Idiom. In breaking down the appeal of fundamentalists that resonates with populations across different countries, classes, races, ethnicities and gender, researchers have explored its support base among middle and lower middle classes in is Ibid.

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Muslim societies. discourses:

There

seem

to

be

three dominant

The first, which stresses the economic issues that have contributed to the rise of fundamentalism, such as unemployment, rapid urbanization, uneven nature of and distortions in economic development along with the support nets provided by extremist organizations, such as educational assistance through madressahs, vocational training, clinics and jobs. The second explores the disruptive Impact of modernization on family and moral values, such as breakdown of traditional structures, promiscuity, sexual harassment, single mothers and other such perceived problems of modernity and emergent insecurities, loss of identity and moorings and the unifying cohesion such groups offer, for example, by making women feel valued and central (in certain limited roles), placing primacy on status quo which offers stability and reiterate need for male control. The third examines the paradigm of empowerment experienced by people in challenging imperialism, domination and the global order and believing in their strength to do so, and, as in the case of Palestine proving inspiration for thousands, being the underdog and fighting the enemy with courage in face of repression, and women feeling empowered and free by becoming veiled. In this vein, it becomes a quest for dignity. The above highlight that deeply divisive political and social concerns and crises are articulated through religion.

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal

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Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Post elections 2002 The MMA as an alliance is relatively recent, formed in 2001, but its roots go back half a century. The religious right wing was always a significant presence in Pakistan's politics as a subterranean force, and for the first time, in the general elections of 2002, emerged out of the shadows into an overt, legitimate, electoral force. In a crucial, defining moment, fundamentalism has legitimately entered the political public sphere and gained control of state power through claims of being the moral voice of a collectivity. What are the implications of conversion of their moral high ground into representational power? Firstly, overtly forming the government in one province (NWFP) and a coalition partner in another (Balochistan) and cross board political legitimacy as Leader of Opposition, allows the MMA to institutionalize their program with impunity. They have now not only the capacity to govern and state backed disciplinary power to build hegemony, but can also guarantee the continued domination of their ideology. Secondly, the ballot box has opened the front door into politics for the religious right wing. They have now a new found representational legitimacy in addition to their Ideological pressure. Previously, their tactics depended mostly on working from within the bureaucracy and military in order to entrench themselves within the state apparatus. They are no longer as dependent on the army ‘backdoor’ and can afford hostile bouncers, such as the U.S establishment. MMA’s attempts at independence from former patrons, their mandate to use the copyright of religion to patent the cultural weave of society, and their ability to extract mileage from global political convulsions to posit the creation, reappropriation and redefinition of a new Islamic alternative, will combine into a force that will propel them forward with

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incalculable velocity, unless Pakistan manages to find an answering force and ideology. Through its overt party actions, MMA has already distorted the continuum of politics by allowing military intervention in politics to' be given constitutional cover. President General Pervaiz Musharraf issued the Legal Framework Order (LFO), through which he made alterations to the Constitution, passed orders, made laws and held elections. According to law, the LFO had to be validated through a constitutional amendment for it to be legal, possible only by approval of two-thirds majority of parliament. MMA broke with other opposition parties and were the ‘swing vote’ that made this Seventeenth Amendment possible. The Seventeenth Amendment is a constitutional aberration and at variance with the canons of parliamentary democracy. After helping the regime establish the supremacy of one person over elected institutions through the LFO, making it possible for the current head of state. General Musharraf, to be both Chief o f Army Staff and the President of the country simultaneously, they have constitutionalized the creation of a supreme decision-making body, the National Security Council, enabling the armed forces to be a part of it and not subservient to its decisions. This is a supra constitutional body that can negate the decisions of elected representatives, thereby over riding popular will. After public denouncements and claims of being cheated into accepting its creation, the MMA agreed to be a part of it. MMA has also provided fillip to the sectarian and militant Islamic outfits, many of whom are now banned. By virtue of doctrinal affinity, MMA’s electoral victory in two provinces has been interpreted as people’s support for the Islamist militant agenda. And theology is not all that holds them together. There is evidence of MMA’s links with armed militant groups also invoking religion, not explored in this study. For a small snapshot, see endnote.* Cultural changes, which this report posits as their main concern, are more difficult to aim for than electoral

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victory, because this strategy is more long drawn out, a longer future term investment. But it is one which was set in motion decades ago, and is picking up momentum, accclcrated immeasurably by international developments. Oppositional politics in Pakistan has always opted to subsume the religious high ground. Mainstream parties have combated religious political forces by co-opting their rhetoric, to the current conjuncture where possibilities of a return to a liberal, democratic state are increasingly limited. By their mantra the MMA avow to ‘on God’s earth, bring God’s system* (AUah ki dharti par AUah ka nizaamj, giving the message that opposing the MMA, a political alliance, is tantamount to resisting God’s order. During elections people were asked to vote for MMA’s requested for election symbol, the book, which the MMA projected as being representational or symbolic of their upholding the Holy Quran - giving people the choice to vote for or against the Quran. The headway this strategy is making is evident from one of the first few public addresses made by (the incumbent) Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz: "I am a Sunni Muslim, and a firm believer in the finality of the prophethood."14 Dismissing all rumours of being an Ahmedi, Aziz said he belonged to a very religious family. The fact that a prime minister had to respond to a rumor in public gatherings is significant, since it demonstrates the mileage of religiously unacceptable allegations. An often cited argument dismissing the longevity of MMA’s presence in politics is that religious parties were irrelevant in past elections and were brought in this time only because of military’s support of them, and the anti'-US sentiment. While both counts of military support of MMA and national revulsion for America’s politics are true, there is also a fallacy implicit in this dismissal. Prior to the 2002 elections the religious right was not irrelevant. The right wing forces 14 Reported by The News, 1*‘ September 2004

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have always commanded significant influence and their 'clout' in politics has always been disproportionately large compared to their electoral power. They have triumphed, in setting directions for political discourses if not over the ballot box.

Evolution of right wing politics answering political strategies

and

Religious revivalism is often seen as the product of an encounter between traditionalism and modernity and the struggle to fight or adapt to changing political structures. In this regard, it is often traced back as a product of colonialism and its imported brand of modernity. Following the European precedent, the colonial governments drew a clear divide between the secular colonial state and the colonized religious domain — specifically, the non-Christian domain. However, whereas the European separation of church and state weakened religious power by divorcing it from the state, the colonial separation instead positioned religious power among the colonized in the locus of anti-colonial opposition. Whereas few traditional scholars confined themselves to policing individual acts of ‘piety,’ such as the proper sitting posture for prayers and acceptable length for finger nails,15 most Muslim clerics, politicians, scholars and leaders found in religion an idiom for resisting the political order that relegated them to the peripheries. Majlis-e-Ahrar, a militant armed extremist religious group at the fore of the battle against colonist rulers is a case in point. Therefore, far from being weakened, the distancing of religious power from the secular colonial state strengthened it, “Enabling it to become an inspirational wellspring for the anti-colonial struggle and the nationalist quest for independence. This led to the politicization of both canonical religions and popular religions as anti-colonial/ nationalist ideology.”16

15As best embodied in Maulana Ashraf Thanwi’s ‘Bahishti Zewar’ 16Vivienne Wee; “Sacred worlds and secular states: the Islamist governance of gender and everyday life in East and Southeast Asia." http://www.lslamsvmposium.citvu.edu.hk. accessed 10th February 2005

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Muhammad All Jinnah and other founding fathers of Pakistan, when giving the call for fighting for a countiy on grounds of religious identity, were following the example o f M.K Gandhi, who in the 1920s, started mobilizing peasants to fight for Ram Rajycu referring to the ancient epoch Ramayarux invoking a just society. Within the Indian sub-continent, the 'civilizing’ mission of the British colonizers and their *white man’s burden’ sparked off revivalism to both, fight the yoke o f colonial repression and to prove that the original culture was no less valuable than the newly imposed one. To epitomize the ’original’ culture, Hindus turned to the time in history before the advent of Muslim rulers/ conquerors, Muslims found this golden age in early Islam, at the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad and the Khulfa-e-Rashideeri. Soon after independence, serious problems to the country’s integrity were posed by primarily Bengalis and also sections of the Baloch and Pathan population, who started advocating secession based on ethnic and historic factors, within the context of an already hostile larger regional power, Hindu India, and who did not accept the basis and logic of Partition. To counter this challenge, the political elite attempted to reorient Islam to neutralize sub-national identities. The Islamic identity, culture and ethos were zealously upheld as the ‘right one*, using this overarching identity to cement and gloss over differences. Consolidating a spectrum of identities into a single broad one can be effectively converted into a unifying political force only when confronted with a separate, contesting identity, such as the Hindus in British India. As a result, the non-recognition or official blurring of other identities has prevented Pakistan from fully resolving the question of nationalities, wearing the veneer thin. In post-Partition Pakistan, Jamaat-e-lslami emerged as the most organized religious political group. Though it opposed the formation of Pakistan (its founder Maulana Abul Ala Maududi called it ‘Na Pakistan* and Jinnah the *Kafir-eAzam’) it quickly realigned its politics to position itself prominently in the new found nation state. JI started a

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massive propaganda effort that led to a seismic perception shift regarding the ideology of Pakistan which was a 'land for Muslims’ into *land for Islam*. The Jamaat-e-Islami boasts that it was singularly responsible for getting the Objectives Resolution passed and then incorporated into successive constitutions of the country, which laid the grounds for Islamizing the state and gave it a religious identity, grounding the nexus between the right wing elements and the State. Then onwards, the religion card has always played a key role. Answering political strategy has never pressed towards de-linking the two, but in fact, other political forces have reacted with an attempt to co-opt and subsume the religious high ground, in the process, altering their own identity to a gradually ‘Islamized’ version, then being challenged by the religio-political right wing for falling short on Islamic credentials. A cursory overview of positioning of religious politics is informing. Ayub Khan withdrew the title 'Islamic' from the state’s identity, from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to simply Pakistan, but this change lasted less than a year. Owing to extreme pressure from religious groups, in 1963, the change was reinstated. While he disallowed political freedoms, he still sought the views of religious parties in his proposed constitution. Though commonly perceived as staunchly secular, he obtained a religious edict, a fatwa to say that women (Fatima Jinnah) cannot become head of state according to Islam. He appeased religious parties by incorporating the Objectives Resolution, yet he was opposed by religious right wing political parties, who were involved in his ouster. Zulflqar All Bhutto of the secular PPP, was confronted with agitation by religious groups, who accused him of being an ‘unbeliever’ and ayaash, with circulating stories of ‘key clubs’, orgies and indulgences in alcohol17. He tried winning When confronted about alcohol Intake, he reportedly said that at least he did not drink the blood o f the poor.

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on the right wing’s home ground by declaring Friday holiday; by setting up the Council of Islamic Ideology, holding the OIC summit and ‘Islamizlng* socialism, declaring Ahmedis nonMuslims and granting Shlas the demand for a separate Islamic studies syllabus, and banning alcohol. Instead o f the acknowledgment he may have expected, these changes were met with accelerated calls for establishing Shariat in the country, known as the Nizam-i-Mustafa movement. This led to the making of an alliance for his ouster (PNA - Pakistan National Alliance) When there was an uprising against him, he went to visit founder of JI, Maududi to help him out. But his government was dismissed and he himself persecuted by General Zia-ul-Haq, with full support of religious right wing parties, by whom he was still seen as an enemy of religion. The riots for establishing a religious order gave General Zia the opportunity to impose martial law and punish Bhutto to death by hanging. The Islamization of the Constitution via the Objectives Resolution gave General Zia the ‘justification* to institutionalize all the regressive and discriminatory mechanisms in the name of religion. JUI opposed his dictatorship, but Jamaat-i-Islami, who now is carrying the bastion of democracy and calling for withdrawal of army from politics, were then his greatest supporters, in fact, the organs via which the policies were conceived and implemented. General Zia held a referendum on whether people supported the Islamic ideology of Pakistan, and after an engineered affirmative result from which he derived legitimacy of his dictatorship, declared JI the only registered and eligible party for elections. The distortion of and havoc wreaked on the Constitution that is decried now was at that time immaterial for the JI ideologues. He censored the press and publicly flogged journalists18, jailed and tortured those who opposed him through the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in Sindh, ‘nationalized* adultery through the Hudood

l®For detail, see 'Press in Chains* and ‘Web of Censorship* by Zamir Niazi

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Ordinance19 and reduced women’s testimony to half that of men, distorted education and warped the syllabi into unintelligible farce20, among other repressive and discriminatory measures, all under the banner and guise of Islam. Zia’s Islamist straitjacket is widely acknowledged but he also faced challenges from Shla clergy, who converged on Islamabad and took over the secretariat of federal government as well as streets to protest pro-Sunni policies and left only when their demands were met. Benazir Bhutto, a self proclaimed liberal democrat, faced the brunt of extreme right wing politics, and also felt the need to prove her ‘moral credentials’. She donned the dupatta on her head permanentiy In public, refused to shake hands with any male international dignitary, and her regime virtually escorted the Taliban to Kabul. Her interior minister Naseerullah Babar was very proud of this accomplishment. In 1995 she withdrew her decision to audit finances of madressahs. Nawaz Sharifs government was a vocal upholder of religious ideology. It privatized murder and its pardon through 'religious* Qisas and Diyat laws, removed the life imprisonment option leaving only the death penalty for blasphemy, cracked down on human rights advocates, and prior to its ouster led by General Musharraf, had tabled an amendment that would implement Shariat across the land. Opposing political forces have always opted for a ‘holler than thou’ strategy towards the religious right wing parties and combated them by co-opting their rhetoric. Governments have always put forward an ‘official Islam' to counter the ‘right wing Islam*. So, despite not having electoral power, the rightwing has always held the pivotal trump card, and upped the ante on religiosity.

iQ For detail, see ’Hudood Ordinances: A Divine Sanction?’ by Asma Jehangir and Ilina Jillani 20 For detail, see SDPI report The Subtle Subversion’ by A. H. Nayyar and Ahmed Saleem

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The above abbreviated chronology underscores the point of how mainstream political parties that do not use overtly religious ideology for their politics have made concessions and paved the way for the rise of religious political parties like the MMA. General Musharraf and his secular regime followed in this tradition by facilitating the MMA electoral victory and invited them to lead the opposition despite the PPP having procured a higher majority of votes and seats in parliament. The nation needs to understand the immense success of the religious right wing politics. The success may not be reflected in vote count, but in a more insidious manner, the shifting of political, societal and cultural discourses onto the right wing’s home ground: religion. Their success has been the now evident multiplicity of Islamic politics, no longer the domain of only religious right wing political groups.

I

Religious political parties first made their electoral mark in the 1970 elections, when they got eighteen of the three hundred national assembly seats, owing exclusively to military support. However, the religious parties were not able to secure more than ten seats in any subsequent election, as held in ’88, ’90, ’93 and ’96. Though this may indicate a temporary decline in the utility of religious political parties, it cannot be used as an indicator of the declining utility of religion in politics. The constituent mainstream Islamist political parties have shifted from the struggle for a supranational Muslim community into a kind of Islamo-nationalism: they want to be fully recognized as legitimate actors on the domestic political scene, and have largely given up the supranational agenda that was part of their ideology. On the other hand, the policy of conservative re-Islamization implemented by successive governments in order to undercut the Islamist opposition and to regain some religious legitimacy has backfired and led to ideological disarmament of all other political entities. It has produced a new brand of Islamic fundamentalism, ideologically conservative but at times politically radical.

*

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G enesis of MMA The 2002 elections marked a change as the Islamist right wing came into power not through a series of inferences, b u t directly. Prior to this, religious political parties had attempted unity by combining seats through regular election maneuvering, or would come together on specific issues. In 1993, Jamaat-e-Islami formed the Pakistan Islamic Front (PIF) with minor Islamist groups to contest elections, but failed badly, procuring less than three per cent of total votes. The 'fertilizer’ for the MMA’s rise was provided in 1995 when religious parties came together in the Milli Yakjehti Council (MYC) to curb rising sectarian violence, formed during Nawaz Sharifs government. However, this alliance was unsuccessful, as firstly the sectarian groups did not pay heed to their directions, and secondly, the alliance itself was rife with internal bickering and allegations slung back and forth. The council became inactive with the passage of time but was never formally disbanded. Some of the leaders did try to revive it from time to time because they felt the need for unity among religious forces. This enabled many of them to remain in touch with one another21. The evident ideological precursor to MMA was the Islaml Muttahlda Inquilabi Mahaz (Islamic United Revolutionary Front). This was led by JUI (F), under Maulana Fazlur Rehman, now the leader of the opposition. Set up in 2000 with twenty eight groups as members, the formation of the IMIM was aimed at curbing the western ideas and culture in the NWFP and Balochistan22. IMAM’s policies are now echoed in the MMA’s government in the two provinces. It targeted NGOs, particularly women’s NGOs. It consistently campaigned against obsccnity according to them proliferated by satellite and cable IV networks and video shops in the urban areas of 21 Sarwar Bari. Election Results, preliminary analysis. Pattan, 2004 ® Ibid

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the NWFP and Balochistan. This led to vigilante action in parts of NWFP, especially against dish antennas, and there were collective pilings and torchings of television sets. This time, they were able to not just pressure for the changes, but actually implement them, since they form the government. So their current strategies are very much in consonance with their declared intents prior to this newly gained popularity. It is because these were seen as ‘side issues, petty, superficial matters* that they were ignored, and now that MMA has started to carry out its plans that social activists, ‘moderate* citizens and the International media are in an uproar. In June 2001, MMA was founded on the initiative of Jamaat-e-Islami, in particular Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who remains its fountainhead, and in the subsequent elections, not only did they win the overwhelming majority of seats in NWFP,23 where they now form the government, and a significant majority in Balochistan24 but also got considerable votes in all other constituencies. They had significant support in the two major cities, Lahore and Karachi25. Islamist tradition as a part of the political culture of the country can be traced back to British India, which Muhammad Waseem condenses into four main currents of Islamic thought and action: mass agitation as in the Khilafat Movement; institutes of learning like Bareilly, Lucknow and Deoband, which provided basis of Muslim self statement on values and norms and response to Western domination; revivalist movements, such as the Wahabi to restore past glory, working through tabligh and tanzim, and activism in Pukhtun tribal areas, local rebellions against a remote and alien state26. The MMA combines all four through street 52 out of 99 provincial assembly seats and 29 out of 35 national assembly seats were won by MMA 24 14 out o f 51 provincial assembly seats and 6 out of 13 national assembly seats were won by MMA 25 In Lahore, 3 national assembly seats out of 13 and In Karachi, 5 out o f 20 national seats in Karachi 2* Growth patterns of Islamic organizations in Pakistan. Muhammad Waseem. http://www.apcs9.org/Publlcatlons/Edited%20Volumes/RellgiousRadicalism /Pages%20from%20Rellgiou3%20Radlcallsm%20ch2.pdf. 23

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agitation, anti-western intellectual discourse, religious scholarship of madressahs and tribal rebellion against the state in FATA.

Brothers-in-Arms: alliance support of the military

with

and

The nexus between the armed forces and the religious right wing has been widely understood and established by political commentators across the country. Right after Partition, the inheritors of state power felt the need to give the nation a consolidating identity, in face of both, internal diversity and rivalry, and to answer the threat of India's potential aggression, which the army kept averring. ‘Nation in danger’ was conflated with ‘Islam in danger’ so citizens as both Pakistanis and Muslims would unite and support the armed forces on the Kashmir issue, and thereby leave the discourse on ‘national interest’ to the army and its fellow upholders, the religious right wing. The nexus continued to strengthen as the Jamaat-i-Islami supported Pakistan’s armed intervention in the then East Pakistan. JUI had been more radical through opposition to General Zia’s dictatorship, but during the Afghan War of the eighties, became close to the establishment. The ‘strategic depth* doctrine adopted by the armed forces allowed a merger of national security apparatus with ideological fuel provided by JUI to first promote the mujahtd warlords and then the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s state institutions and the politico-religious right wing hand had a common interest in and made a concerted effort to build an overarching national identity solely on the basis of religion. Political Islam was anointed to serve a nation building function, and eventually the political commitment to an ‘ideological’ state evolved into a strategic commitment to the jihadi ideology. So the relationship between the two has been symbiotic, with each having dependency and deriving 'nourishment* from the other. The Islamist elements entrenched in state institutions, such as the military, provide the direction, and their links, in

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fact external organs, such as religious political parties, provide the ideological fervor and fuel. The related sectarian outfits carry out the ‘adjustments* required to 'fix’ the external environment, and their international networks strengthen and finance the process. The MMA and political and militant Islam have been referred to in sections of the press as Frankenstein monsters, connoting that the violent manifestations of Islamist ideology are a state experiment gone wrong. The graph of MMA’s meteoric rise Is plotted along the axis of, firstly, state support (the military-bureaucracy oligarchy) and secondly, the external and internal environ vls&-vis the War on Terror. The state support for the 2002 elections is illustrated in the following ways; •

•

The military regime, Institutionalized and legitimized under the command of General Pervaiz Musharraf, ensured that all mainstream political parties were consigned to the backbumer, creating a political vacuum. The military regime introduced a revolutionary concept in Pakistani politics, that the elected officials must be educated to a certain level, that of having a graduate degree. This was made into an eligibility criterion for contesting elections, however, it was set aside to accommodate the religious right wing. The madressah certifications were accepted as valid substitutions, while knowing there is no centralized standardization process or degree awarding system, like in Iran. This allowed all madressahs, which are part of the voluntary sector, to prescribe standards, while those outside the mainstream curriculum system were removed from the field of competition. This endorsed the equivalency of the system (which the state is currently involved In transforming because it is seen as ‘unfit’) and allowed MMA cadres opportunity while disqualifying others.

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•

•

Similarly, Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League were not allowed to canvass for votes properly, as their public rallies and demonstrations were banned under the pretext of maintaining public order, via Section 144. The MMA was kept beyond purview, and continued to solicit votes and launched public campaigns, including a public rally of over ten thousand people in Peshawar. Next, senior leaders of mainstream political parties were persecuted (on both legitimate as well as trumped up charges), thrown in jail or made to leave the country. This included not just the stewardship of PPP and PML, but their second level leadership as well. The National Accountability Bureau, set up for the purpose, was hilariously and aptly called NAB. Though overall, the MMA is relatively ‘untainted* by corruption charges, its leadership Is also known for its excesses (one is nicknamed Maulana Diesel for Octroi ‘profits*, another ‘owns* land of Punjab University and so on). The MMA was left untouched. In fact, some religious right wingers were ‘escorted* to victory, for example the late Maulana Azam Tariq. the firebrand leader of the Sunni extremist (and now banned) group Sipah Sahaba Pakistan, was taken out of jail and allowed to contest elections despite over twenty charges of terrorism registered against him.

Given the General’s then aversion to the populist parties and the need to find an acceptable political front/ marionette, a new political party was gouged out of the existing two mainstream ones. The PML (Q), commonly called the King's Party, drew its strengths from turncoats and there was consistent pressure on other party members to defect. The MMA, on the other hand, was not co-opted nor its ranks broken by pressure to switch loyalties. In fact, it was allowed to consolidate political power by giving tacit, if not active fillip. But to a great extent, this romance of the fundamentalist parties and the military somewhat waned with the results of the 2002 elections, and is now more ambivalent.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

The religious parties had always needed the armed forces as a ‘backdoor* to political power, as the front door, electoral power, had remained firmly closed for them. This time though, the front door opened. The religious right wing’s dependence on the army for power was greatly reduced as it found a new source o f power - the ballot box - that allowed

the MMA to be their own implementing force without needing its usual intermediary. The unprecedented independent momentum gained by these parties has upset the balance of power, as the army no longer has the strings in its hands. For the first time in the country's history, the religious right wing parties have collectively opposed the army, and the army, again for the first time, has openly condemned extremist views of the religious right. The religious parties discovered in their moment of ‘enlightenment* that armed warfare against civilians and state repression in Waziristan in the hunt for Al-Qaeda was against human rights, against morals and against Islam. Consequently, mass demonstrations, fatwas. protests and inflammatory speeches followed, reaching out to people in a manner of a call to arms. That the religious political right wing sided with similar barbarism in Bangladesh, in fact were party to it, is irrelevant, as is their silence during the Balochistan insurgency of the seventies, persecution of Bhutto's supporters in Sindh and Punjab in the eighties, and the migrant ethnicity in the nineties. They also had epiphany that showed that the role of army in politics is highly detrimental, distorts democracy beyond recognition and tramples on the will of the people, and siding with the US is tantamount to willfully foregoing sovereignty and national welfare. Siding with General Zia and prospering on US dollars during the Afghan wars of the eighties remains besides the point, as does the fact that they resolved that all people’s claims to sovereignty are illegitimate since sovereignty lies with Allah alone. This time, however, confrontation pays more dividends. As the religious parties assert autonomy, the army and State, both embodied in General Musharraf, ‘realize' how

THE MMA OrrEN8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

counter-productive extremism is, that Pakistan is essentially a moderate country, that the right wing’s vision is medieval, that Afghanistan and Kashmir are not as integral concerns as they were made out to be, and the way forward is education, economic progress and tolerance. The State’s sponsorship (which in Pakistan invariably indicates the armed forces) of the currents that led to the present scenario is as conveniently relegated to history. Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s recalcitrant posturing can in part be attributed to a show of strength and a demand to be dealt with as equals and accorded a changed status by the religious right’s earlier benefactors; and the State’s oscillation between belligerence and Indulgence of them may be seen as sentiment towards their prodigy mixed with anger and incredulity at their defiant self assertion. Despite the falling out, ‘soft comers’ inextricably linked with the earlier symbiotic survival still exist. The nexus intact, it is just not as central. A reading of the standoff over various issues shows that MMA problematizes General Musharraf and not the armed forces. The MMA made the 17th Amendment possible, which allowed General Musharraf to keep his posts both as President and Chief of Army Staff, giving the current set up a legal and much needed lifeline. The ruling coalition did not have a majority in the parliament needed to pass the LFO (Legal Framework Order), so the MMA support was critical. In turn, MMA was offered the position of leader of the opposition. They know that the longer they stay in power, the more political legitimacy they will earn. In December 2002, analyst Sarwar Bari predicted, “The MMA would not like to rock the boat in the short term and make the system go on by making compromises. It would try to paralyze the federal government but would not try to bring it down. It would ideally want to deepen its support before the next general elections, no matter when they take place."

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

MMA’s election canvassing was largely premised on promising to halt the A1 Qaeda hunts and operations in tribal areas. They were completely unable to fulfill this, and to offer face saving, the army/ state allowed them to play the role of mediators in the Wana operations in South Waziristan, a major battle scene between sympathizers of A1 Qaeda and their supportive local militants, and the Pakistan army, technically assisted by the US. The army tried to give them compensation by allowing them intermission between the military and mujahideen, which led to the Shikai Agreement in April 2004, and two MMA MNAs were guarantors o f the accord. In fact, the Nation reported a high level MMA delegation of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and Liaqat Baloch was briefed by Interior Secretary, Secretary FATA and intelligence officials regarding the operations, and the MMA agreed to back the government policy of registration of foreigners. After avowals to forcibly end the flush-outs of militants, two MMA MNAs then went to persuade two of the most wanted militants to surrender27. So their utility for each other is not finished. As commented on in countless observations and media articles, it helps the General to point a finger to the Taliban-esque specter that he singularly is warding off and is the best buffer for. He is marketing a ‘them or me* vision internationally. The Musharraf government publicly announced and recognized MMA as its main political opposition in parliament, whereas it secured only 11.1 per cent of popular vote in the 2002 elections. Bhutto's PPP had the single largest bloc of opposition parliamentarians, 81 to MMA’s 63. MMA was eventually invited to nominate a leader of opposition, and it fielded Maulana Fazlur Rehman. This deliberate projection of MMA created the illusion that radical Islamist groups are his primary opposition, which helped the General by slackening off the international community's insistence on democratic reform. It helped MMA by reinstating mandate and legitimacy

27 Nation, Aziz-ud-Din Ahmed, 15/07/04

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

as a strongly backed representative of a populace, leading the country's political opposition. It is equally convenient for the MMA to have a relatively hostile central government, firstly as fear, persecution and threat are universally the greatest unifying force, and in this instance, keeping the constituent parties of the MMA cemented together (whose perspectives are otherwise varied, even conflicting, and in the past have led to fratricides of sorts); and secondly, it allows them a demon to point to that is obstructing their way, is responsible for their defeats, that they can deflect attention to. Whatever the MMA manage to do, they herald as their victory over ‘enemies’ and ‘darkness1. Whatever they have not managed to do, promises they fail to deliver on. the onus shifts to the ‘US and its puppet regime in Pakistan*. An antagonist central power helps in the way the MMA oscillates between its identities as the government of a province, to itself as opposition. An example is MMA proposing regressive legislation in NWFP while demanding provincial autonomy and power to do what they want there as government on one hand, and on the other, demonstrating against the central government and condemning their failure to deliver when there were snow blocks and avalanches in NWFP, as they slid into role of opposition. In the more recent insurgency in Balochistan, MMA has given public statements condemning military action, assuming the position of opposition, yet in Balochistan province, they are a part of a coalition government that has sided with the state in its aggression, from which they have not resigned, so also continue to be part of the provincial government and government's action that they oppose on a national level. They occupy both spaces, as part of establishment, and that of dissent to it. An oppressed population defending itself from an oppressor is favorably viewed by most people. For this reason fundamentalist movements often gravitate toward creating martyrs or emphasizing their oppression by

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

the larger society in order to increase the appeal of their objectives, both for their members and for the outside world. Starting in 2005, the relationship between the military and the political religious right wing seems to have undergone transformaUon and bccome more complex. On the one hand, General Musharraf and his ruling political party conceded to the religious political rightwing on the passport issue. They initially decided to remove the column declaring one's religion from the passport, and after the right wing latched on to it as an indicator of negating Islam in the country and an Ahmedi conspiracy to get into the holy city of Mecca, they backtracked and revoked the change. Yet on the other hand, the President General seems to be taking steps to mould his rhetoric o f not tolerating intolerance into concrete action. Stressing the need to ‘curb obscurantism’, declaring he is now stronger and more in a position to confront the right wing nationally, General Musharraf challenged the proposed Hisbah Act in the Supreme Court, which declared its intents counter productive, cracked down on militant organizations banned earlier to make the prohibition effective, and in the local body elections, contestants with militant and sectarian credentials were barred from participation, and he appealed to people not to support extremism and bigotry. The political right wing has retaliated by calling on the people to launch a movement against the government, issuing censorious press statements vilifying secularism and the General’s capitulation to the West, calling him an enemy of religion. They again proposed the Hisbah Act in a diluted form, invoking provincial autonomy, boycotted the National Security Council that they helped form, were the first and most active presence in the earthquake affected zones after Pakistan’s biggest earthquake of 8th October 2005, and distributed relief, dug out people from rubble and organized funerals. They seem to have embarked on a match to one-up the other, leaving others to speculate whether it is a ’friendly* or an actual contest this time.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

As the focus of the War on Terror increasingly shifts away from Afghanistan; as the region moves to the peripheries o f the international news lens; and Pakistan's ability to pull terrorist rabbits out of hats wanes, so does General Musharrafs utility for allies (read USA). As the rhetoric of democracy for Pakistan seems to be making a come back on the international front, the General needs a reinvigorated vision and faith that he can deliver. Women and women's bodies have become the site for the play out of MMA’s political opposition to the ruling regime, where positive initiatives spearheaded by General Musharraf have been bitterly contested, such as changes in the Hudood Ordinances to make the Zina ordinance more justicable, and quota for women in the parliament and in civil bureaucracy, among others. The MMA and the current regime seem to be on a collision course on both the domestic and external agenda, not because the religio-political right wing has changed its politics, but because the militaiy has turned on its ideological axis. The ‘mullah militaiy alliance* metaphor is reductive and not just oversimplification but fallacious. Political commentators have speculated that the only possibility of a ‘reunion’ would be if there is a complete break down in IndoPak peace talks and hostilities resume. Post-2005, the state has ostensibly disowned the political right wing, as well as its own past. In this battle for independence, it can be debated which outcome has greater implications for Pakistan’s society - the armed forces and state maintaining its nexus with political Islamist groups and thereby control over them, as in the recent past, or rightwing orthodox political groups attaining autonomy. The results of complete Islamist sovereignty have been seen elsewhere in the world, such as in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

THE MMA O m m iV B Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Why people supported them The global order has led many to conclude that since Islam itself is under attack, the religious parties are the best bet for its survival. In the face of the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and threats to Iran, people’s Muslim identity eclipsed their other identities. Policies adopted by the US in the wake of the September 2001 attacks are generally perceived as not just knee jerk reactions but deliberately planned imperialist designs. Anti-American sentiment is currently strong cement, and the MMA utilized it most effectively. Invasion and destruction of Afghanistan, indiscriminate ‘precision* bombings and consequently emerging horror stories of suffering, treatment of victims such as in Shiberghan prison, Guantanamo Bay and double standards on ‘enemy combatants’, invasion and occupation of Iraq, visuals from Abu Ghraib, killing fields of Afghanistan, the scramble for oil and reconstruction contracts, the hypocrisy of bolstering both Saddam and the Taliban and then invading to rescue people from them, desecration of the Holy Quran as routine torture are Just the latest ‘toppings’ of the USA’s track record of according to other nation states ‘freedom and dignity*. Another given constant is the empathy felt for the Palestinians and anger at America’s persistent support of Israel and Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the recent outrage of the Muslim countries at the blasphemous cartoon controversy28, in Pakistan, exacerbated by reports of Pakistanis living and traveling abroad about treatment meted out to them, international incidents like the shooting of innocent Pakistani citizens based on suspicions in Greece, have all consolidated the need to turn inwards for solidarity, unity and even survival. In contrast to the current US establishment’s quest to support ‘good Muslims’29, in the past has it has consistently 28 First printed in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten » Mahmood Mamdanl. in * Good Muslim. Rad Muslim.’ Vanguard 2005. pointing out the misleading judgment o f political Identities between secular, westernized ones as differentiated from premodem, fanatical ones

THE MMA OVTRN8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

given fillip to the religious extremist forces in Pakistan; directly, financially and morally, by linkages, networks, ammunition, funding and endorsement, and presently, indirectly, by making a mockery of principles of justice through severely unjust invasions of Muslim countries and blatant human rights violations, and pushing through its neo­ conservative economics, thereby adding fuel to the ire of extremists. Mamdani points out the parallels between jihadists and U.S neo-conservatives30. The rellglo-political right wing has therefore gained both ways, by joining hands with the United States, and by opposing it The MMA crested the wave of anti-US sentiment which had gained immense momentum post the US led invasion of Afghanistan. Their anti-America rhetoric played a seminal role in wooing voters. The MMA utilized this in a two tiered manner to gain optimum results: The JI took its usual PanIslamic approach and drew on the global, increasingly visible, anti-Muslim approach that has led to persecution of Muslims from Chechnya to Palestine, Afghanistan to Iraq to Kashmir, urging all Muslims to unite against the attack on religion and come together to face the attacks on their identity and existence, which appealed to voters nationwide. It was the assertion of collective identity. The support base of JUI-F and JUI-S is mainly in the NWFP. The Pakhtun ethnic identity has historically been strong and continues to be,31 strengthened by links with Mehmood Mamdani Illustrates the similarities: In addition to the mix of Interest and ideology, the two groups share global ambitions and a deep faith in the efficacy o f politically motivated violence, and both count among their ranks cadres whose biographies are often coloured by early stints in the Trotskyist or the Maoist left. Both jihadists and neoconservatives are products o f the Cold War, when ideologically driven violence was embraced by all sides, secular and religious. He juxtapositions Bush's notion of selfdefense as preemptive as shared by A1 Qaeda: if you are defending yourself In Afghanistan by attacking New York, how is it different from defending yourself in New York by attacking Afghanistan?, he asks. 31 Various news media reported on 27th May 2006 that a ‘Pakhtoon Loya Jirga’ was held in Karachi for Karachi based Pathans to debate their problems and propose solutions, echoing the Afghan Loya Jirga o f 2002. See Daily Times edition for details.

THE BOCA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Pukhtuns In Afghanistan, those being kinship, tribes spanning both countries, inter-marriages, seasonal migration and a closely linked commerce and trade. The US-led coalition attacks on Afghanistan also prompted an ethnic/ nationalist response in which Pukhtuns were seen as under attack, and JUI-F and JU1-S were voted for as a Pukhtun group opposing the attacks. This procured a Pukhtun vote, leading to majority votes in NWFP and the Pukhtun vote in Balochistan and other provinces. (For more detail, see end note)u. The religious right wing in NWFP has systematically conflated Pakhtun culture with Islamic culture, driving home the point that in attacking Pakhtuns. the USA and its ‘puppet regime* in Islamabad had engineered an attack on the integrity of the Islamic polity and a capitulation to a Western cultural imperialism. MMA won most of its* seats in Pakhtundominated areas and lost out in the non-Pakhtun areas of Abbotabad, Haripur and Manshera in NWFP. Likewise, in the Pakhtun areas of Baluchistan like Zhob, Pishin. and Loralai. MMA achieved better results. In Baluch-dominated areas. Baluch nationalists along with PML-Q made their presence felt. JUI is primarily a Pakhtun vote bank. JI is more grounded in Punjab and within the Urdu speaking communities of Sindh, though its leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmed is also ethnically a Pakhtun. This is not to say that all Pakhtuns support MMA, In fact, some of their most vocal critics belong to the same ethnicity. It is also not possible to de-contextualize MMA’s electoral victory from the national political scenario predating 9/11. The country had seen democratically elected governments in fits and starts, each being ousted before completing its term, amid charges of corruption, nepotism, bad governance, cronyism and the like, and were disillusioned with the two main political parties, willing to tiy a third force, which seemingly had a coherent agenda. The severity of the disenchantment with democratically elected governments can be evinced from the fact that the military regime of General Musharraf was welcomed and ushered in by many, celebrated as earlier military interventions of General Zia and General

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Ayub were. In terms of a political organization. MMA appeared as yet untested hope, strengthened immeasurably by their claim to walk (and make others walk) under the shadow of the Holy Book - the MMA’s politics of symbolism- their election mascot was a book. In expounding its recently garnered hatred of its former comrade-in-arms, the USA, the MMA drew strength from an outreach system the other parties cannot begin to match: the local mosque. Mullahs live in local mosques and are easily available to people (men), so it is an immense base to draw on, in comparison to other politicians who climb and perch upon the class ladder. Their support is not just from boys enrolled in madressahs but the captive audience that they Interact with at least once a week on Fridays, if not daily or five times a day. In personal conversations with many of MMA’s supporters, it became evident that these were people formerly disenfranchised in that they were disconnected from the political mainstream, and though they came out to participate in rallies before 2002, they did not vote. They were either Pukhtuns who had migrated within the country so their votes were not registered in the place they worked and resided, or felt the dominant political players would not respond to their needs in any way, so they kept away from the ballot box. This time, they voted, whereas many who traditionally supported other parties decided not to vote (ANP supporters were upset about the party’s ‘weak* response to the Afghanistan invasion, PPP and PML supporters demoralized by absentia and vacuum of leadership). The MMA, therefore, has three critical constituencies - the most socially conservative, the disillusioned and disempowered and the most idealist. Prior to 2002, waves of Islamization always came from above, whereas this time they came from below, from the grass roots. In elections 2002, many separate issues became conflated, and the post 9/11 world order became the operational lens through which people began to view the world, ranging from personal Identity to national politics and international alignments. This collapsed the otherwise

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003*2005

separate strands of support for MMA and their political ideology, with people who chose to assert their religious identity with those who wanted to give America a ‘slap in the face* in any way possible, those voting in accord with ethnic and tribal affiliations and those who support the cause of Muslims globally and are against their oppression. All these dimensions became articulated through an MMA vote, even though otherwise, they are distinct aspirations of people who in other circumstances would not necessarily give MMA their political endorsement nor assume that MMA would fulfill them. Historian Dr. Mubarak All pointed out in a private discussion that the workers and mass supporters of MMA are fundamentalists in their commitment, driven by faith and sentiment rather than by familiarity with principal intellectual traditions within the religion. In fact, many such Intellectual traditions have been disowned by them. For unstudied followers, who are unaware of multiple perspectives and dissenting voices from within the framework, simplistic Islamic slogans are always above criticism. Once the fundamentalist Inclination is nurtured. It opens on to various forms of acceleration, such as the cultivated antagonism and hate towards against all ‘other* forces. This hostility translates the non-extremist code of life as a cop out, a deference and submission to the Satanic west, and the reactionary brainwashing that happens in madressahs is instrumental in the transition from religious fundamentalism to armed militancy. On the other hand, the extremist militancy, glorified by non-militant fundamentalism. Is packaged to offer the jihadist a ticket to paradise. Heavenly rewards therefore cannot be negotiated by temporal considerations. The development of this strategy, to lure with the ‘decadence’32 of the Hereafter, is attributed as far back as the seventh century » Popular Muslim writings on the Hereafter allude to a heaven where each man Is entitled to seventy virgins, life amid streams of honey and milk and promise of eternal youth and vigor. Philosophical interpretations point to this as an allegory: that return to and oneness with God in spirit and consequent contentment of being whole has been presented as a sexualized metaphor.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

to Hassan-bin-Sabbah (also known as the Old Man of the Mountains), the leader of a Shla Ismaili sect that gave to the w orld the word 'assassin', down to the contemporary Iran Iraq w a r with each side promising fighters that they will be escorted to heaven by winged horses if they die, to current day Afghan militias and jihadist recruiters in Pakistan. Globally, fundamentalism has also appealed to people to mediate the destructive economic and social impact of neo­ liberal policies. MMA’s parliamentarians have been the most active and vocal critics of the global liberalization regime, opposed to restrictive WTO agreements, against privatization o f public services and side with small farmers on subsidy issues. French analyst of Islamist politics. Olivier Roy notes that the concept of umrna now plays the same role as did the proletariat for the Trotskyist and leftist groups in the 1960s: “It is an Imaginary and therefore silent community that gives legitimacy to the small group claiming to speak in its name.**33 Though they speak about religion not class, it makes the same point of being inclusive of the downtrodden, with implications that they are equal to, if not on higher moral ground to the rich and privileged and superior to other religious minorities, even if the latter are better off economically. MMA’s support is in places a conscious political rejection of the West and the political models associated with it (the presently dominant neo-liberal colonialism, nationalism, socialism) in favor of the construction of an Islamic order, which is understood as being the most relevant and responsive to people’s issues. Their rhetoric targets modem imperialism as the leftists did decades ago, with less success. Even A1 Qaeda, the understood embodiment of Islamist terrorism, did not target the Vatican or St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as it would if it were a religious war on Christianity. The World Trade Center was the epitome of globalization and modernity, and some would claim. Empire. M Olivier Roy: The Failure o f Political Islam, Harvard University Press. Cambridge. 1994

THE MMA OVTBH8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

So MMA is heir not only to the traditions of the quietist Salaflsm and activism such as the Muslim Brotherhood, but perhaps even more so to recent secular traditions, such as Third World anti-imperialism. Roy notes “The cliche that in Islam there Is no difference between politics and religion ... works in favor of the political, making it easier to redefine the core content of religion and subordinate it to a political project."34 So Political Islam's leadership has found a balancing equation that allows them to be ideologically conservative, while being politically radical. Where JI aims more for pan-Islamic ties and has its base in urban, mercantile middle classes, JUI targeted the poorer sections of society and made inroads into rural areas, presenting themselves as a rival to the forces of socialism and the left. JUI's cadres are drawn from the madressahs, also a system that reaches out to the poor. Consequently, MMA has been vocal against inflation and demonstrated against price hikes and taken pro-poor stands on privatization of public utilities. In elections, they brought previously excluded social strata into the political process.. Fundamentalism gave many who were dissatisfied with their lot a powerful language of opposition, and can be analyzed as a social community’s mobilization against its own marginalization and threats to its way of life. It is critical to examine MMA’s support also with the framework of a class struggle. There is a degree of egalitarianism in their principles, for example where they (and through the Objectives Resolution, so does the Constitution of Pakistan) say that sovereignty over the country lies with Allah alone, all people are equal vice-regents of God on earth and no privilege should be given to anyone on account of birth or place and status in society. It is another matter that in MMA's practice, equal vice-regency extends only to men, in fact Muslim men. The madressah constituency, was mobilized by the MMA in an unprecedented manner. In their election canvassing, MMA upheld values of austerity, its*

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

parliamentarians declined to acccpt increased pay, they did n ot travel with entourages like other elected representatives, accepted minimal protocol and were widely accessible to all people. The head of MMA in Sindh, for example, sits in a madressah in Sukkur and is available to any ordinary (male) citizen who walks in. Qazi Hussain Ahmed refused to take on a ministry or cabinet post, saying it would distance him from the people. Even when the MMA hierarchy is not directly interacting with Its supporters, they have a permanent deputy - the maulvi of every mosque across the country, who meets the constituency at every prayer time. MMA gave many poor people an idiom of resistance; this must be understood as a spectacular illustration of the disconnect between the populace and ‘other* rulers, and the continual and systemic political marginalization of the poor. However, MMA's outreach to the poorer class should not be understood as class based politics. This strategy was limited to the NWFP (through JUI-F) and of late, in certain parts of central Punjab, particularly because the other classes —middle classes, the upwardly mobile and the elite were firm supporters of other political parties, namely the ANP, PML-N and the PPP. In these areas, the poor were marginalized by the mainstream parties, and MMA could gain the most by having a separate focus, drawing on a host of other factors, such as anti-Americanism etc., outlined earlier. This can be illustrated by looking at their approach in the other two provinces, where they gain the most by allying themselves with ruling classes, instead of challenging them. The Hyderabad President of JUI-F, Maulana Taj Muhummad Nahlon made a public speech against NGOs, ostensibly against ‘those who sell out national interest’ but the reasons given for condemning them expose JUI-F in particular and MMA in general as equally willing to side with exploiting classes. He condemned NGOs of “Destroying the carpet industry and damaging economy by screaming about socalled rights issues in 1986-87. Later on, they destroyed our agriculture by creating uncalled for conflict between zarrdndar

THS MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

and hart on so called 'bonded labor*, and now some NGOs want to destroy our industry by targeting brick kiln Industry and setting the kiln workers against employers."35 This speech obviously absolves power wielders such as contractors. Industry owners and feudal lords of all human rights violations and reduces the suffering of people, among the poorest and most marginalized in Pakistan, to imagined conspiracies of those with Vested interests*. The NGOs are against ‘national interest* because they raised Issues impacting hundreds of lives in tragic, painful ways. Child labor of carpet industries and bonded labor in agriculture and brick kiln factories, documented at length by many researchers and organizations, are conspired out of existence. Tellingly, this stance was taken in Sindh, where religious persons and mosque clergy have traditionally no power base and little relevance In politics, usually the reserve of landed classes Izamindai) and nascent Industrialists, formerly zamindars. The MMA operates in sync with them on the principle that they will command little power in Sindh independent of these ruling classes. MMA and its supporters are not the relic of an ancient society but the product of a modem political crisis. The solution essentially therefore lies in a responsive politics that addresses the political and social Issues that have led to the current national crisis of psyche.

35 Daily Times. 28th April 2006

. " *

The Woman Agenda

THE MMA OPFEH8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

The Woman Agenda The MMA has posited moral corruption as the lynchpin of imperialist designs and as the crux of Pakistan's currcnt prcdicamcnt. The domination of Muslim societies is seen to have been achieved through the undermining of religion and culture, not through military or economic domination as nationalists and socialists have argued in the past. With this outlook, the ‘women question* acquires tremendous weight for the MMA as women traditionally have been upheld as the morality markers in society. Women have been the canvass for designing ideological and social constructs historically and globally by colonizers as well as nationalists, by the orthodoxy as well as the ‘liberals*. MMA has inherited this tradition and strategy, utilizing it with a fervor and precision to, on the one hand, push women more securely behind the private iron curtain of the home by deregulating and challenging mechanisms of their protection (however inadequate), such as employment and financial independence, visibility, mobility, recourse to media, protective laws, civil and personal liberties, safe houses and shelters, social support systems and organizations like NGOs, and public discourses on violence in the intimate realm. On the other hand, MMA and its ideologues have presented and projected themselves as the ‘correct authority* to invade this private realm and regulate private lives and choices of citizens. MMA is attempting to legitimize itself as the only valid authority over women, and will extend its protection to those women who will conform to its* ideology. The Jamaat-i-Islami website proclaims, “Women as mothers and wives bear the responsibility for the moral health and therefore the political fate of the country.** A majority of women in Pakistan (that is, those who are not ideologically supporters of the MMA) live lives that in themselves are a threat to the MMA’s world view. Women who are ‘ignorant of the righteous path*, such as the illiterate poor villagers, can be excused and reformed. The urban educated

THE HMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

women who have an Informed opposition to the MMA Ideology are beyond redemption and have ‘sold out’. In the ‘othering’ process, they have become the ‘damned* who will go to hell, unless they bring themselves In line with MMA’s political vision. The women’s rights advocates* confrontation with the politico-religious extremists is therefore not predicated only on differences of opinion, but between assertion and denial of space and legitimacy of existence in the public sphere. Attacks on women's rights are a productive way to obtain consensus and alliances amongst very diverse conservatives. The formal mechanisms institutionalized by the MMA are primarily in NWFP, where they form the government, and therefore have the power to implement their vision. The MMA cadres there, including government employees are drawn from a particular power base for human resources - the madressah system. This educational system is designed to create a particular mindset that submits blindly to authority, distances reason, logic and inquiry, encourages ‘righteous* militancy by breeding an us vs. them psychology and alienates the other sex. Boys ranging from three to seven years of age are sent to live in these school cum hostels and till they leave as young men after graduation, have minimal, if any, contact with families. The students are all male, the teachers are all male. In fact, the existence of women remains peripheral and irrelevant to the system. These students do not develop any normal emotioned relations with the opposite sex, their curriculum teaches them to see them as objects to be ‘protect* or 'detest*, depending on the morality marks prescribed by the madressah system. It highlights only the reproductive function of women, and child and home care. Women’s presence in public life is seen as an anomaly, and the only legitimacy extended to them is within the home. It is this belief system that informs initiatives of the MMA stalwarts, and is what the women's rights movement is up against.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

MMA’s women specific Initiatives are generally understood in wider society as ’high on rhetoric and low on impact*, often perceived as cosmetic changes; fodder for their supporters. The Impact is seen as minimal because of the highly visible changes in lives of urban women. More and more women are working in both various traditional and nontraditional fields; the media explosion of private sector programming, and through it, women's increasing prominence, the dress codes more relaxed; their presence in politics stronger; more and more women are going for higher education and specialization; taboos and conventional 'no go areas' for women are gradually disintegrating, for example in the services industries, in the armed forces, in the entertainment industry and so on. But these small islands of altered social order are, firstly, not representative of the country, and more alarmingly, it is these very developments that are being used to stem the tide. The very fact that women have experienced progress is the argument used not just to contain and restrain the progress, but to reverse the process. Women's presence in non-traditional arenas and their depiction in the media are being packaged as proof of their being 'western, obscene and vulgar*. So as a starting point, women need to first ‘prove* that they are not 'western, obscene and vulgar' before any legitimacy is extended to their being in the public arena. Increasingly, working women are covering their hair and donning hijaab and veils of varying degrees, and vocally condemning women who do not conform. Next, strengthened political participation and accessing higher education are also platforms used by the religious right wing to ‘mainstream* their agenda. The MMA, for example, has vociferously opposed the thirty three percent political representation accorded to women. Yet the MMA also forwarded their women candidates and are fulfilling these seats, using this presence to promote their agenda. A MMA parliamentarian told the International Crisis Group (ICG) group that “Women should have separate, segregated assemblies to debate their issues", utilizing the

THE MMA OFFEH8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

representational quota to say they would repeal provision of this quota when they have the political power base to do so. Similarly, in Institutes of higher education, women are running daivaa circles, holding dors to convince more and more women that the MMA’s regressive policies are in the best interest of women. To pick a few examples among many of women related ‘concerns’ addressed by MMA is the banning of male doctors and technicians from carrying out ultrasound examinations and using electrocardiographs (ECGs) on female patients. The province has few women ECG technicians and those trained in ultrasound. This means that women have to travel outside the province, to Rawalpindi and other such costly alternatives. Surgeons in Peshawar have said there are very few female anesthetists or theatre technicians in the province36. In face of dearth of health care, this further limits women’s access. The reasons cited by MMA are that men doctors and technicians could use such interaction with women patients to gain sexual satisfaction and appease carnal desires by examining women. In certain parts of NWFP, women have been banned from working in Public Call Offices under the pretext of ‘public morality’ as their public visibility and access was causing immoral urges In men. In Peshawar city, mannequins shaped like women were banned from being displayed in shop windows for promoting ‘lust and desire’ in men by depicting women’s bodies. On one hand, the MMA launched the ‘anti-obscenity’ drive by tearing down billboards featuring women, protesting that the corporations sexually exploited women by displaying them as sexually alluring objects, and on the other hand, the above series of measures amply demonstrate that the MMA ideologues cannot themselves see women as anything but sexual objects. A patient being operated on or undergoing an ECG scan can, in their vision, be an object that excites lust, and a male doctor would necessarily have a libidinal response. Women working in telephone offices would pervert 36 Sunday Times 28/09/03

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men's imagination Just by virtue of existence. Even wax or plastic statutes meant to highlight yards of cloth, they believe, would lead men to fevered lust because the plastic curves in a way to resemble the ultimate incitement before which all men are understood as helpless and enslaved by biology - the woman. This is the very objectification MMA denounces advertising agencies for. Their argument then transmutes into women and all references to them needing to be erased from the public consciousness, not to protect the women, but to protect the men and leave intact their religiosity. The provincial MMA government in NWFP passed a law, the Hisbah (Accountability) Act. It anticipates a moral police brigade for the ‘Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice’ (Amer-bil-Maroof Nahi-anil-Munkar) that would, among other things, ensure perpetuation of the MMA’s code of morality for the province. The entire proposed Hisbah Act, as printed by the government of NWFP, does not use the word "women*. But that it will be used to severely curtail women’s mobility is understood by reflecting on moral brigades used elsewhere in the Muslim world, and on the centrality of women in projecting the fundamentalist agenda and identity. In the Hisbah Act, the ultimate arbiter, the Mohtasib, who cannot be challenged in any court of law of the country, would “protect / watch the Islamic values and etiquettes".37 The desire to establish a cultural hegemony becomes excessively clear, as the Act does not refer to protecting Islamic law or its implementation, but values and etiquettes. For authorities in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban verdicts, glimpse of a woman’s ankle or wrist is against Islamic etiquettes. In Iran, according to the Islamic value system, faces may be shown, nothing else. In Chechnya, Muslim women do not need to prescribe to any such cover. Feminist scholars of Islam have rejected these limitations as patriarchal and self serving. The question arises - who defines etiquette? Norms vary tribe to tribe, district to district, city to city, area to area, and country to country. Whomever’s Values " Hisbah Bill. Section 9 b.

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and etiquettes* prevail becomes the power wielder ‘in charge* o f the moral social order. And the Hisbah Act goes on to further outline special powers of the mohtasib to not just protect Islamic values, but to actively “Discourage un-Islamic social values’*.38 If the Pukhtun madressah culture is the marker (since most of the MMA Pukhtun cadres are madressah graduates) then a woman standing in a bus next to a man violates social values, as does any social gathering of mixed sexes, so does singing in celebration, so does adolescent children playing together. Maulana Noorani comments "30 lakh bastards are bom in the UK every year, this is because of co-education."39 In the madressah culture, women’s prominence in any sphere outside the private home constitutes violation of values. In fact, the social values for women of the more middle class, non-sectarian Jamaat-iIslami are not consistent with social values for women of the tribal Pukhtuns, or the more ‘purist* Wahhabi school followers, the Deobandis. The power this discretion offers them is pivotal, as the Hisbah Act repeats yet again that the Mohtasib would “Check the tendency of indecent behavior at public places”. Again, a woman’s physical appearance in a place understood as male territory can and does count as indecent behavior. Feminists have highlighted that in many Islamist writings, women have been seen as the jltna*0, who can unleash devastating force unless kept tightly leashed, and that this is possible only if they are kept within the domesticated, non-threatening roles of mothers and daughters. This, in turn, is possible if the family, the place women ‘belong* in is kept sacred and elevated. A women’s crisis shelter in NWFP was shut down by the MMA government on charges that it promoted adultery and obscenity. Crisis centers, obviously, are approached by women in crisis. Experience in and reflections on such centers across Pakistan show that such services are availed 38 Hisbah Bill, Section 23, No. XIV 39 Newsline magazine. November 2002. cited in cover story. 40 Fitna has a dual meaning, one is disorder and chaos, the other means a beautiful women 'femme fatale’, leading to conflation o f the two.

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by women who face extensive and intensive domestic violence, or are being forced Into marriage against their will or forcibly prevented from entering marriage at their will, or being forced Into any other situation against their will. In almost all cases, the coercion comes from family, whether natal, marital or extended. The crisis they face is a result of having breached social norms by resisting. The shelter could house up to hundred women, and had In it a mosque. However, providing an alternate source of protection was seen as eroding or challenging the role of family (which is the penultimate control agent), so the center was projected as a ‘home breaker’, inciting women to adultery and lewd behavior, and a simultaneous character assassination campaign was initiated against workers of Aurat Foundation-Peshawar. A suggestion of the MMA administered Social Welfare Department to make the shelter acceptable, was to make it a center for aged and infirm women, and for women beggars. This gives an insight into the sexual politics behind this. Crisis centers are availed by women who after suffering violence or by refusing to suffer violence in various forms, exercise agency. Approaching a shelter is a step to change their situation, therefore a challenge to the position they are placed in. This act of agency by women who at varying points refuse to be passive victims, is threatening to the MMA world view. Beggars, the aged and physically handicapped women who would need the shelter would presumably be those who have been eschewed and discarded by the system, not those who are challenging it41. The other option the government gave was that the implementing agency, Aurat Foundation, be replaced by Al-Khidmat Foundation, an NGO of MMA partner Jamaat-i-Islami42. The family is a protective institution that provides for women across Pakistan strength, security, identity, continuity and solace. However, for many, it is also a locus of abuse and 41 After the closure of the center, the government of NWFP has started a drug rehabilitation center on the same premises. 42 Uzma Khan, Storm in the Shelter; Lessons learnt from the Mera Ghar experience. Aurat Foundation, undated.

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domination. This is a dimension the MMA has determinedly turned its face away from. In the Punjab Assembly, MMA vociferously opposed the Law against Domestic Violence (2003) proposed by Dr. Anjum Amjad, and the bill was eventually defeated. HRCFs [Human Rights Commission of Pakistan] annual report, 'State of Human Rights in Pakistan’ 2004, said 80% of women across Pakistan face domestic violence. LHRLA’s (Lawyers for Human Rights & Legal Aid) report recorded 4302 cases of domestic violence that appeared in print media in 2004 alone, noting the more extreme, life threatening ones since the others do not make it to the press. The MMA’s understanding of preventing vice does not include violence against women. A twenty four year old pregnant woman, Shakila, died after severe bum injuries, in a horrific case of domestic violence in Peshawar (the seat of MMA’s government in NWFP). She was burnt by her husband and his family. The police refused to register a First Information Report, despite her parent’s insistence. She named her culprits on record^.She struggled for life, pleading for justice for days before dying. A week earlier, Fouzia had been burnt to death by her mother in law and husband for not giving her husband permission to remarry. This was also in Peshawar. Both cases featured prominently in the media, raised by women’s rights activists in close contact with the two victims. The MMA did not issue any condemnation or sentence. A nineteen year old woman arrived at the Rawalpindi Darul Amaan after escaping from her family in Dera Ismail Khan, where she was being forced to wed a seventy two year old man against her will, as he had paid her family a hefty amount44. Silence again from the MMA leadership. This silence of the ‘protectors’ of women extends to all forms of violence against women, not just the familial sort. A woman councilor was raped in Nowshera, MMA’s focus district where Shariat has been applied, where Namaaz/ « News. 07/04/05 44 Nation, 05/ 07/04

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Scdaat committees have been formulated and steps taken to ensure that 'good Muslims abound’. The woman counselor publicly appealed for help, and went to meet Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Sirajul Qazl of the MMA. She received no help. The rape victim said on record that she believed she was victimized for carrying out her duties as councilor, which included warning a man about his behaviour on receiving complaints by women. That night, he and his cousins forcibly entered her house and took her and her friend to another house at gun point, where they were stripped and filmed naked while the men wrote their names on the women’s nude bodies. The men then threatened and blackmailed the women. MMA, the ‘protector of women* remained silent. This happened in January 2004, and a year later, the accused were still out on bail, no case hearings had been held, no help from MMA forthwith45. When there was a case of public stripping and rape in Mardan, the provincial law minister said that ‘revenge* was a family matter and the brothers of the victim had asked the government to step aside and let them deal with it; the plea was accepted. The MMA claims to be vehemently against honor killings, stating they were un-Islamic. In Takht Bai, Mardan district, a woman was killed on this very pretext and her son had sent out a plea to the NWFP government to help him get justice, giving testimony his mother was innocent and falsely accused by his father to settle scores with an old enemy. Her son had launched his appeal on 30th November 2004, requesting a raid to recover his mother from the family’s repressive and torturous custody. No action was taken, his plea ignored, and two months later. Dawn reported she had been killed46. “In NWFP, women are enjoying the status of queens and the male members of their family are always at their beck and call, complying strictly with all their orders and commands. Our actions and deeds bear testimony to the fact ♦»Dawn 07/01/05 ^Dawn 09/01/05

THE MMA OPFB1V81VE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

that we are not against women’s rights but are protectors and champions of their rights," says NWFP senior MMA minister SlraJ ul Haq.47 Beyond NWFP, in other provinces where MMA members have been elected, the same policy prevails. In Lahore, a teenage girl was gang raped inside an imaam’s house adjacent to the mosque, by his younger brother and friends. She was kept locked to the back of mosque for a couple of days, continuously raped before the police raided the mosque and found her48. The MMA remained silent. Mukhtaran Mai, a woman who was gang raped in Meerwala, Muzaffargarh, has become symbolic of resistance for having the courage to fight for justice openly. The MMA is the only political force that has not condemned the acts of violence against her or offered support. MMA senator Dr. Kulsoom Parveen in fact, said in a senate proceeding that instead of coming out in the open about how her honor was compromised and going to court, she should pray to Allah for justice; Nazish Azghar, another gang rape victim from Sialkot received no support from the MMA, despite her public appeal or help. In March 2004, addressing a public rally, Samia Raheel Qazi (Qazi Hussain’s daughter) said that if women observed haya, they would not get raped in the first place, placing the onus of the crime as well as responsibility of its circumvention on women. In Dalbandin in Balochistan, two girls (aged five and eight years) were raped, slaughtered and bodies thrown in a ditch. Both parties of the coalition government, one of which is MMA, remained silent. In Gujranwala, where the parliamentarian elect belongs to the MMA, there have been news reports49 of a serial rapist who targets girls aged ten and below, with up to twelve such cases by May 2005. MMA remained silent. Gujranwala is *7 addressing a worker’s training congregation at Ahya -ul Uloom In Tlmergara, reported in News. 06/09/ 2003 48 Muhummad Haneef, leader of prayer in mosque. Shalimar police precincts, as reported by The News. 10/04/05. All major newspapers, through May 2005

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also the scene of the attack on female runners In the marathon, where the MMA MNA said he would never tolerate such ‘Immoral’ actions in his constituency, and would prevent it by force. No such statements by him on the immorality and criminality of the serial rapist, or any avowals to capture him at all costs. This is interesting in contrast to the rape of three boys by a local schoolteacher in NWFP in 2003, where the MMA clerics were at the forefront of condemnation. Though their formula for redress was myopic, since they transferred the teacher to another location and school leaving other children open to abuse, but felt they had to acknowledge it and act and could not Ignore the rape of boys. It requires some reflection as to why the MMA would then, given they are self appointed guardians of morality, not rally these issues of violence against women. On various platforms and occasions, representatives of the MMA have spoken about the desire to establish the perfect ‘Islamic* state, restating the glorious halcyon of Islamic past, through implementing Shariah and Islamic laws. This includes women staying out of the public sphere. Educational institutes have been forcibly segregated, the first one being Khyber Medical College. The MMA stated that this would increase opportunities for women deterred by co-education, but this was contested by parents of girls in the college, who felt this would ghettoize them since the new campus had no facilities that a medical college requires, and a dearth of qualified teachers. In effect, it was negative discrimination.,The JI has even recommended separate graveyards for men and women50. MMA women parliamentarians, when questioned why they accepted political representation when they don't agree with the concept of women’s quota in assemblies, have stated on record that they would show other women the ‘right path* and enable them to withdraw from the public sphere.

50As pointed out by Bushra Gohar, Director. HRMDC, in a conversation at a seminar on MMA at SDPI.

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after accomplishing which, they themselves would also retreat. As highlighted above, women’s presence beyond the private domain is seen as Infringement on the male territory, and a force that can 'tempt’ men and ‘lead them astray’. Men are generally seen as the primary subject of worldly affairs, and secondly as ‘enslaved by base passions* over which it is assumed they have no control. By putting the onus of morality on women, men stand absolved. From this, it is popularly inferred that women defying this public/ private dichotomy, in turn, are inviting sexual violence and are responsible for it; hence, no condemnation of the perpetrators. In context of this society wide belief system, MMA’s strategy for preventing violence against women such as rape, gang rape and harassment is to reduce to minimum if not eliminate, their interaction with men. This explanation still falls short of understanding MMA’s ignoring of domestic violence. For that, the importance of the family unit in their politics and its centrality to the social control of women must be understood. Qazi Hussain Ahmed stated, “The west is conspiring to destroy the very basis of the Muslim family unit in the name of women’s liberation and gender equality in order to weaken and degenerate our society."51 Again, the importance of the family unit in providing women security, comfort and identity and preserving social order cannot be stressed enough, but it is equally evident that it is often a site of abuse. Without advocating the dismantling of the family unit, there is a critical need to equalize the power imbalances along gendered lines within the family system. Women need to be seen and treated as equals in their roles within the family, as it is the power structures within families that lead to violence. But to ‘control’ women, the role of the male patriarch is central and inalienable, thus the resistance to any measure of equality and to any challenges to familial power structures. Acknowledging the issue of domestic violence means si Daily Times 03/10/04

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acknowledging the power structures within the family as a problem. The MMA’s Hisbah Act52 (through which they propose to implement the Shariah and bring about a moral order) gives the Mohtasib, the final arbiter of morality, special powers in Section 23 (xxv) the powers to ‘deal with those found to be disobedient to their parents*. As they say that a woman’s consent must be obtained before marriage, the MMA must also be fully aware that if women are forced into marriage or prevented from it, it is usually by their parents. Making parental obedience mandatory and to be upheld by state would effectively curtail marriage of choice and deal ‘satisfactorily* with the religious right wing’s old stand that a woman should have the consent of her wali (male guardian) before entering a marriage union. The role and will of the male patriarch, they propose, should be legally enforceable. Given the context of forced marriages, forced prevention of marriages, vant the practice of giving women in marriages as compensation for wrongs committed, and walwar, the bride price tradition, the direction of a law that enforces the decision of a male head of household becomes obvious. The MMA vociferously opposed a bill tabled in the National Assembly on honor killings on the grounds that it proposed making the State the wali for women who are killed by their families. The implications of state assuming the role of actors in best interest of women, overriding the male patriarch would have far reaching consequences in the tribal and feudal cultures and their sanctioning of different forms of violence against women. Once this clause was dropped, MMA endorsed the bill. The JI held a World Conference, titled ‘Strong family, surety of our survival and women’s rights.’ The first part of the title itself is indicative ‘strong family - surety of our survival*, with strong* translating into rigid, traditional and conservative, and surety of (MMA’s) survival meaning perpetuating the system. w Draft Hisbah Bill, ‘Change of Paradigm', officially printed by Law, Parliamentary Affairs & Human Rights Department, Government o f NWFP. undated.

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The mother/ daughter (who is a future mother) role is held in reverence, and all transgressions are seen as threats to set the Jitna free. ‘Mothering* of women is therefore central to whatever acceptability the extremist factions extend to the public role and participation of women. Misogyny that looks for cover in religion often duels with the conflicting concepts o f the Jitna and the ‘mother’, both encased in the female form. The Islamic concept of nushuz is often interpreted to mean a w ife who disobeys her husband. It is this wifely disobedience that is to be proscribed at all costs, as a woman’s disobedience to a man (husband) could in a collective form spillover to general disobedience from women towards men in general. A combat strategy usually employed is to enable one to leash the other, that the ‘mother’ in each woman should be strengthened and valorized so the nushuz in her is overcome. This then explains the ‘pro-women’ initiatives and statements MMA has made, such as JI stating the importance of educating girls not for education’s intrinsic value or as their right, but so that they become better mothers, and giving them respect and regard as they are ‘mothers of tomorrow’; TJP lionizing women as ‘bastions of our culture*; JUI*s eventual acceptance of women’s thirty three per cent representation in local government so ‘our daughters and daughters-in-laws can help us protect and save daughters and daughters-in-laws of Pakistan’’53. A core fundamentalist agenda is the control of women’s minds and bodies, and all such forces support the patriarchal family as a central agent o f such control, and women are viewed as embodying the morals and traditional values of the family and larger community. The outrage at the mixed marathon arranged and attacked in Gujranwala can be summed up by a statement of Qari Kifayatullah (MMA MNA) who said “These unbelievers want our mothers, wives and daughters to run around wild on the roads with men. These men have no sense of shame. 53 In contrast, the modernist development discourse proposes women’s Inclusion in the labor force and in other spheres not as women’s intrinsic rights but for national interest and economic growth, at the service of capitalism.

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These girls will be mothers tomorrow. Are these the kinds of mothers we want for our nation?** Any venturing beyond a confined, tightly defined acceptable role for women (which for JI, includes being educated) is seen as destructive deviation. Any assertion by women of control of their bodies by constraint on motherhood therefore threatens the maternal identity, the only force holding back the fttncu Secretary General of Women Wing Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Senator Dr. Kauser Firdos said the population welfare program of the government is indeed part of a global effort to promote sexual waywardness in the country. The government, she charged, is getting million dollars from foreign donors to inject indecency among the youth54. The JI women leaders demanded a complete ban on the advertisement of family planning programmes and removal of all related signboards, and diverting family planning funds for improving general health services, since family planning was un-Islamic55. A few months later, the NWFP government torched thousands of confiscated condom posters, video cassettes and compact discs (CDs) in another campaign against 'obscenity'. This time, the ‘obscenity flush out’ was directly official. Provincial Minister for Religious Affairs Maulana Amanullah Haqqani himself set the material on fire on the outskirts of Peshawar56. Senior minister Sirajul-Haq said family planning was a tool designed to curtail the Muslim population of the world, asking all mothers to resist it, for the future of their children, or the children would grow up in a Muslimless world. In Peshawar city, many chemists have stopped stocking over the counter forms of birth control. To ’stop women’s exploitation’, ideological supporters of the MMA appointed themselves as ‘protectors’ and launched vigilante action within the first six months of MMA’s rule in NWFP, and days after the Hisbah Act was approved by the NWFP assembly. Youth wings of its constituent 54Taken from http: //www.1amaat.org/news/2005/mav/06/ 1002.html. accessed on 23rd May 2005 55 Dawn. 2/04/04 56 Dawn 19/12/04

THE MMA OFFE1V81VE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

organizations felt that they had official patronage that paved the way for them to take matters into their own hand and 'implement’ the desired system. In May 2003, Shabab-i-Milli, the youth wing of Jamaat-i-Islami launched their self styled ‘anti-obscenity’ drive by attacking and defacing billboards with advertisements featuring women. Women’s faces in pictures were blackened and tom down, and posters showing women set ablaze. Member of National Assembly and Ameer JI, Sabir Hussain Awan, Justified and endorsed the acts by stating that many warnings had been given to the district administration to pull down these Vulgar displays’ (being women’s faces), and sincc they went unheeded, the religious activists had to do it themselves. By condoning this action, a signal was given. One week later, two hundred members of Shabab-i-Milli vandalized billboards featuring women at Gaddafi Chowk in Multan, in Punjab province, where they defaced billboards and set a circus on fire. Shabab-i-Milli member Saad Khurshid Kanju addressed a youth meeting, and justifying mutilation of women’s faces on billboards, said that Shabab-i-Milli were ‘feminists’ and were protesting ‘against the humiliation of women’. Rao Zafar Iqbal, another member publicly proclaimed they were ‘upholding the law’ as the law dos not allow anyone to spoil society through pornography. The following few days saw the same acts of vandalism carried out in Lahore. In Karachi, the JI run local government, through its mayor, banned depiction of women in advertisements as ‘obscene and vulgar’. Women politicians of the MMA remain completely covered in public, with only their eyes visible, so using that as a benchmark, any other state of dress is thereby a state of undress or under-dress. A large part of the MMA’s Islamicization campaign has been packaged for public consumption as being ‘for the protection of women’. In this anti-obscenity drive, the district administration was blamed for not heeding their warning to remove the billboards, and multi-nationals and other companies that used women as models were blamed for exploiting women. At no point, ostensibly, were the women models themselves blamed or targeted for having agreed to feature in the advertisements in the first place. But the

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2CX)3-2005

‘blackening’ of their faces was meant to announce a m oral judgment of their conduct and to send out a sinister signal to women as well. It is symbolic that the women’s pictures on th e billboards were defaced by being ‘blackened* with paint a s opposed to being ‘whitened* or ‘reddened* or any other color paint used. Culturally, black is equated with loss of honor and lack of shame, and traditionally, wrong-doers would b e made to sit on donkeys with their faces blackened and paraded publicly. The tribal & feudal custom of honor killing is the practice of murdering women who have shamed their families by committing adultery, and the women are then referred to as kari or siyah kari or tor. translating into the ‘blackened woman'. In Urdu, the ultimate embodiment o f shame is kaala mu, translating into 'blackened face. A frequent abuse for a woman is kabnoi, meaning woman with a black face. In April 2005, the MMA then proposed a bill titled ‘Prohibition of Indecent Advertisements Bill 2005, that would make publishing ‘indecent* advertisements a criminal and nonbailable offence.57 ‘Indecent* is defined as everything against religion, eastern values and traditions, and promotes licentiousness. It proposes a one year imprisonment for any advertising agency that uses female models, and five years for those who repeatedly violate the law. What the MMA cannot contrive on religious grounds, they turn to Values and traditions’ for endorsement. Around the same time this bill was tabled, the ideological supporters of MMA went on yet another ‘purity drive* and the billboards featuring women across NWFP were blackened again - this time artfully. They blackened women’s faces except their eyes, in effect, putting them in purdah (veil), which allows only the eyes to be revealed.

57, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1 /hi/world/south asia/443547l.stm. accessed 14 April, 2005

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Restrictive dress codes that the MMA women parliamentarians have been pleading for and demanding, and segregating education that has been a stated explicit statement of intent of the JI, reinforce traditional, conservative roles. The founder of JI, Maulana Abul Ala Maudodi in his book Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam, argues for sexual segregation as a fundamental requirement for ordering men's desire, and for limiting moral depravity, nudism, licentiousness, and all such 'Western diseases’. The women s wing of Jamaat-i-Islami proposed to the MMA government to enforce a dress code that would require all office-going women and university/college girls to wear scarves58. In its month-long campaign for the revival of Islamic culture and civilization, the women's wing had put up banners in the city inscribed with slogans urging the society, particularly women, to adopt Islamic ways and shun Western way of life. This campaign was led by the Nazima of the JI women’s wing, Bilquis Husain. Husain said they had demanded that the NWFP government should make wearing of scarf and burqa compulsory for women in educational institutions and offices, and make dupattas instead of the Vshaped sash as part of the uniform in government colleges. It is of strategic significance that these demands came from a women’s group, albeit a rightist one. Political analysts and provincial and national assembly observers Eire In agreement that the women parliamentarians of the MMA are not just directly related to the males in the MMA arena (as daughters, sisters and wives brought in to fulfill the thirty three percent representation mandated by the government, which the MMA vociferously opposed, and then conformed to) but are also under direct instructions and guidelines, seldom given the space to assert themselves independently. It may be safely inferred that wherever the ideas originated (probably from elsewhere since the women’s wing of JI does not do independent decision making) it was decided that the public

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articulation should be through the women themselves. Somehow, women talking of women’s confinement and curtailment of rights makes the talk more legitimate, more ‘indigenous*, less 'imposed*. The success of this strategy had already been observed in 2003, over the engineered crisis surrounding the revising of Hudood Ordinances59. Owing to constant pressure from civil society organizations, these have remained in public debate. General Musharraf formed a permanent National Commission on Status of Women (NCSW) headed by Shaheen Sardar All and later by Justice Majida Rizvi. Like the report of the previous Inquiry Commission on Women (headed by Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid) the Permanent Commission proposed repeal of the Hudood Ordinance. Veiled women activists of Jamaat-i-Islami staged a protest demonstration outside the Parliament House against the recommendation to repeal the Hudood Ordinance. Led by JI Niab Nazima Ms Sakina Shahid, the protesters rejected the recommendations of the NCSW and opposed the idea of imposing, what they called, the suggestions and opinion of a few Westernised women on the nation contrary to the will of a majority of women. The MMA women insisted that it should stay on the statute books as ‘a protection for women* and that it was a divine law, not made by any individual. The MMA also proposed a bill to disallow the media from covering cases related to the Hudood Ordinance, so whatever hope women have of attracting public sympathy, solidarity groups and official attention get effectively blindsided. There have been countless protests and demonstrations against this law, but this was the first time in twenty five years that a pro-Hudood demonstration was held. It is of immense symbolic value that women were 59 These laws, promulgated In 1979 as the launch o f General Zla’s Islamization campaign, were particularly controversial, among them being the Zina Ordinance that makes adultery a crime against the State of Pakistan, and blurs the line between consensual and forced sexual Intercourse, between rape and adultery. The law has been used to victimize women, and most women In jails across Pakistan have been charged under it.

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demonstrating to retain a law that has been repeatedly opposed as it victimizes women and is seen to be against the interest of women. This becomes clear in the light of Senior Minister Siraj ul Haq’s statement congratulating the women MPs, in which he said that this would convey a message not only to Pakistan, but also to the entire world. When Qazi Hussain Ahmed was asked about forcible segregation of educational institutes, he remarked “I did not say it, the women said it. More than ten thousand women have asked for it."60 That the MMA is transfigured by political expedience becomes evident by reflecting on the duality of positions they have adopted. The MMA women protestors were told by MMA MNA Liaqat Baloch his party would never allow anyone to repeal or amend the Hudood laws, adding that the Islamic Ideology Council (CII) was the only forum to decide about Hudood Ordinance (5th Sept 03). Exactly eleven months later, the Chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology gave a public statement that the Hudood Laws and Blasphemy Laws are man-made, not divine, and therefore can be amended. The MMA out rightly rejected the Chairman’s assertion, expressed dissatisfaction with CII members, and questioned their appointment. Liaqat Baloch who had said previously that CII was the only platform for decision on this issue, stated that the Chairman of CII, and the CII itself had “Bowed before pressure of the rulers and under US pressure by claiming amendments can be made”, vowing again that no change in either one would be allowed61. That they rejected the CII when it was not in conformity with their designs can be seen as indicative of the fact that these apparatus are seen by MMA more as tools for exercising power and control than for engaging in religious discourse, debate and religiously informed decision making. The point seems then not to understand dimensions of discourse and implement the spirit of religion but to use eo Newsline magazine. November 2002, Interview of Qazi Hussain Ahmed 5/08/04, Nation

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ritualistic conformity as a means of strong arming any dissent to maintain and extend hegemony of MMA’s religious perspectives, and as that gains currency, to derive from it political strength. A typical trend in fundamentalist movements the world over is the selective applications of guiding principles. H ie creation of Pakistan was opposed by the religious right wing forces as it confined geographically the concept of the Muslim tumrvah, which transcends national boundaries. Propagating what happens to Muslims somewhere as a cause of direct concern and action by Muslims everywhere is central to the Islamist project, which is why oppression of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and so on are owned and felt, discussed and acted upon by the portion of the ummah in Pakistan, in the name of Islam. In 2005, Amna Wadud, an African American woman led a prayer congregation in the USA, widely condemned and commented on by the Islamist right wing in Pakistan, as the issue concerned the ummah. Contrast these to the case of Imrana Ilahi which created international waves in June 2005: in India, the Darul Uloom Deoband passed a fatwa declaring that Imrana, who had been raped by her father-in-law was haraam (prohibited) for her husband and should now live as wife of her rapist, and therefore step­ mother to her husband with whom she has five children. The MMA remained silent on this, since it was India's ‘internal* issue, invoking sovereignty of nation states in dealing with ‘their’ problems. The suppression of women’s rights is not confined to the politics of MMA alone. The collusion of (at times mutually antagonistic) political parties with MMA on the ‘women question* shows how it is often strategically deployed as unifying force. In the election for a vacated seat in Dera Ismail Khan (PF 66) in June 2005, all contesting political parties and their candidates signed the agreement that women would not be allowed to vote in the elections. Despite wide coverage of the agreement and absence of women voters in national media, the Election Commission of Pakistan remained silent. None of the ‘liberal’ parties took action or reprimanded its

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party members for agreeing to this. Maulana Lutfur Rehman, brother of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the JUI (F) President and national Leader of Opposition won the election. Not wanting to sound any less concerned about women’s protection than the M MA, members of NWFP assembly belonging to the (progressive?) PPP & PPPP62 moved a resolution urging federal government to exempt women from pasting photos on National Identity Cards and passports63. It goes without saying that they were equally eager to preserve the status quo that citizenship documents challenge, by according women independent identities. Conveniently, religion was not evoked here, but the argument made was that using women's pictures was against ‘social norms’. The NWFP assembly passed this resolution unanimously, in the interest of and for the protection of women. In parts of NWFP (as also in other parts of Pakistan), women are not even accorded names on their identity cards, as outsiders knowing their name breaks their ‘purdah’. The space for name is written out as wife of x, daughter No.l of x and so on. In the controversial closing down of the women’s shelter Mera Ghar, its undesirability was first flagged by a member and office bearer of ANP, Jehanzaib Siddiqui, who questioned the ‘religious’ credibility of the ruling MMA MNA for allowing it’s establishment64. Discourses on women within opposition politics, over the years, have become progressively moralized, and with the acceleration of MMA’s force field, may eventually be Islamicized. To minimize the impact of any dissenting voices, the website of JI informs women that “‘emancipation of women’, ‘gender equality’, and ‘gender discrimination’ are some of the slogans to lure and misguide women folk."65 The very notion of gender, which refers to the roles society teaches men and women, is rejected by the religious right wing. This is because the concept of gender differentiates between the social 62 Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) MPA Syed Muhammad Ali Shah and Rao-led PPP MPA Alamzeb Umerzai. ® Dawn 5 September 2004 Uzma Khan. Storm in a Shelter, Lessons leamt from the Mera Ghar experience; Aurat Foundation, undated. as http://www.tamaat.org/womenwing/lndex.html. accessed 24 May 05.

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construction of masculine and feminine and between biology, which predetermines certain functions. For the fundamentalists, biology determines all facets of life, and a woman’s sexual Identity cannot be extricated from, in fact, is central to her all other roles, functions, aspirations and desires. The entire struggle is therefore to keep women confined to their biologically determined roles as mothers, daughters and wives. All ‘transgressions’ are thereby to be challenged and curtailed, with direct political action, by vigilante action, by Igniting people’s sentiment, by using religion for self seeing purposes and by creating fertile ground for their Ideological hegemony by weeding out resistance and public support for it. The MMA and its ideological supporters have paced out their women-focused Islamlzation so that it appears diffused, and sporadic. Looking at them together provides a more insidious picture. Aside from supporters of MMA ideology, many of those who either oppose them or are ambivalent to them have said that MMA has, in these three years, have made no significant change and banning mannequins and blackening billboards are eyewash exercises. I argue they are not. They are indications of a mindset that is gaining currency. In Gujranwala. for example, seven theatres were shut down on the charge that they promote fahashi (obscenity). Without even going into the contents of the theatre performances and their obscenity or lack of, the reaction of the MMA delegates appointed to deal with the issue is telling. The actresses were told to perform wuzu (ablutions) before appearing in front of the committee. Muslims perform such ablutions before direct communication with God (prayers/ namaaz) in an attempt to purify themselves before the Supreme Power. The instructions therefore, first label the women as ‘impure’ and secondly, communicate the hierarchy of a lesser mortal appearing before a higher moral power. The actresses were also given an ultimatum; to either stop acting, or to change their names if they were named after prominent women in Islam, Instead of

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'insulting their stature*. But these acts are seen as ‘high on rhetoric and low on impact*. Even if the Hisbah law is never implemented, its proposal gives out a signal that the religious right wing proposes and endorses it, and others are preventing its actualization. Rhetoric has its own value, even if not translated into action. Vigilante action to ‘implement’ the law has already begun, visible in public attacks on women, from the forced closure of cultural events, disruption of art related activities, insistence on conjured Islamic values of forced segregation in schools outside the NWFP (such as Punjab University in Lahore and SMC Medical in Karachi, both strongholds of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talba). Religious extremists take their cues not Just from official policies, but from 'indications* given by their leaders. In the first quarter of 2005, various newspapers reported twenty women were attacked in Wah Cantt., by men on motor cycles. All the women were wearing shalwar kameez and dupatta, but no veil. According to news reports, the women were slashed with razors on their arms. During the Aga Khan Board crisis (see section on education) Qazl Hussain Ahmed blamed the Aga Khanis for attempting to ‘secularize* the country and consequently destroy it. saying they were behind this recent attack on madressah boards, and threatened to get them officially declared as ‘non-Muslims*. A few days later, a religious scholar belonging to MMA, Mufti Shamazal was killed. The mob rioting in protest to his killing attacked Aga Khan laboratories and diagnostic centers in Karachi. Personal politics informs vision. The ‘Marathon 2005* episode did not Just divide society into liberals versus the conservatives but cleaved the progressives into two as well. What was seen as an effort to impose Western standards of liberalism (by running on the roads side by side with men) was a battle for space and an assertion that the fundamentalists cannot impose their will on the populace. Many progressive elements felt it was an unnecessary confrontation. What was overlooked was that it was not this Westernized elite* that planned the first marathon in

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Gujranwala. nor did they come out In support of it. Only when the vigilantes forcibly stopped it and attacked the girl participants and spectators was there protest, and that too was against the force used. When another marathon protesting violence against women was organized by HRCP, it was once again attacked, this time by the police, as the religious right wing militants of Shabab-i-Milli stood by and watched. Masjids across NWFP were used for addressing the issue in Khutbas (Friday sermons), in which listeners w ere told women in Lahore were fighting for the right to run naked on the roads, and all women with sharm-o-hayaa would n ever talk of or claim these or any other such women’s rights. T ills is in complete consonance with Qazi Hussain Ahm ed’s declaration that ‘‘Women’s liberation Is being promoted on ly by those trying to subjugate the basic values of decency; the entire nation should be united to face the challenges posed in the name of the so-called rights of women as envisaged in alien values."66 The MMA ideology deifies women in the private sphere and delegitimizes them in the public sphere. Their understanding of men and women as ‘equal but separate in form and function* was also the philosophy of the apartheid in South Africa. There, biological determinism was used to segregate according to race, not gender, according to predetermined abilities and ‘right’ spaces and places of people, and resulted in the worst case of discrimination and oppression people are capable of. Though this belief system about men and women and their roles and rights in society is not the creation of the MMA and existed external and prior to it, but institutionalizing it and constantly reinforcing it through a formally held government ideology is a means of mass perpetuation and multiplication. The strategy is not to whip and terrorize women into subjugation and submission like the Taliban, but to graft or genetically engineer society so

66 At the JI World conference called ‘Strong family, surety of our survival and women's rights' at Azakhel Park reported in Daily Times, 03/10/04.

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th at the end product is subtler, but insidiously and covertly, similar. The national and international focus on fundamentalism is itself myopic, and bom out of a pre­ occupation with the threat of militancy such as that of AlQaeda and its splinter groups. As dangerous and threatening as extremist militants of the Osama variety are, most women are not directly affected by their violent activism, firstly as their numbers are very small, and secondly a$ their spaces are shrinking. The more far reaching, long term and therefore more serious impact fundamentalism has in Pakistan has been its influence on the way Pakistani society views and thinks of itself, and this has been engineered not through armed militancy, but ideological hegemonic designs actualized through MMA and other similar religious parties and entities. I would hypothesize that the only temporary phenomenon is probably the physical structure of MMA itself. The evolving outlook MMA represents, has been, for various reasons and through various strategies ‘mainstreamed', and will continue to assert itself, in one form or another, on the political landscape. The MMA has introduced some positive measures, such as a law making inheritance and property rights of women mandatory, though it maintains their entitlement to a lesser share than that of males, [this somewhat progressive action is off set by the Hisbah Act, which proposes criminalizing parental disobedience), condemning the practice o f honor killings and swara (offset by refusing to allow the state to be guardian of best interest of affected women, instead of familial wal0, focused on social development expenditure in NWFP and agitated against price hikes that have impacted common people across the country* These can be read in detail in their own publication on their track record after three years in power67. However, policies ranging from 67 The MMA Government: Progress and Advances; printed by Government of NWFP, 2005

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women's political participation to depiction on billboards, from education to sports, from theatre to development to greater tolerance for violence against women, whether in the cultural or domestic sphere, in both private and public contexts, have pushed women back. The aggregate are not cosmetic changes. It is of use to reflect on another process that brought together such initiatives to see the accumulative and multiplier effect, as in the case of Iran (I have deliberately not used Afghanistan to cross compare, as Talibanization' is seen as a cliched, West conflated trap.) Writing about the ‘reactionary clergy* in Iran, Azar Nafisi notes68 “They annulled progressive laws including the Family Protection Law and brought back the old laws that had dominated society ... polygamy; the age o f consent fo r girls lowered from 18 to 9; women were barred from many public offices, from 140 academic disciplines, and from many jobs in engineering, medicine and fields to be deemed masculine territory, and women were expelled from many secretarial jobs because their presence was regarded as a temptation to their bosses. One by one, u»men's rights were taken away from them Universities, schools and even buses became segregated and women had to obtain their husband's permission to work. In passing these laws, the new rulers not only made a statement against women, but against a century long struggle fo r modernity. The most obvious symbol o f the new regime was the ‘veil’ defined as a black, body length garment that covered women’s hair and head down to her toes. The regime claimed that the unveiling o f Iranian women had been solely the work o f Imperialists and their domestic agents.... The vigilantes attacked and harassed unveiled women in public.... It took fou r years and use o f coercion and force to impose the veil on womerL... In order to implement the law, the regime created vice squads and jails fo r *moral offences* with permission to

68Azar Nafisi. Tales o f Subversion: Women challenging fundamentalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Religious Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights o f Women, ed. Courtney W. Howland. Palgrave, 1999

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raid, public places or private homes, in search fo r alcoholic drinks, 'decadent’ music, video films, playing cards, sexually mixed parties, or unveiled women.... The Leftist intellectuals condemned women who protested as “a handfld o f fashion models and painted dolls” who are turning insignificant issues into a major affair as if it is as important as democracy and the country*s independence.** There are startling similarities to note; Muslim Family Personal Law, promulgated by the Ayub regime in the sixties, which offers to women many legal protections, have been constantly opposed by the religious right in Pakistan. Similar legislation in Iran was repealed. According to the Sharia laws, girls become adult at puberty (between 9 to 12), at which age they are 'marriageable’, in conflict with the Convention on Rights to Child that Pakistan is signatory to, where the age of consent is eighteen. Supremacy of Sharia would ensure that as well. Barring women from public offices - the precursors in Pakistan are evident in the protests against women judges, the MMA’s avowal to reduce or eliminate women’s representation in assemblies and certain fields such as sports being labeled ’masculine territories. In Iran, in termination of women’s secretarial positions, the argument is interestingly that they 'tempted* their bosses, the same arguments cited by MMA to ban women from working in public call offices, as they incite general temptation and corrupt public morality. Segregation of universities and schools upheld by MMA, raiding public and private spaces for music and alcohol also proposed under the Hisbah Act and already being carried out (even without the Hisbah enforcement), and the identity marker promoted being the veil. Those who resisted the Veil’ were branded as ‘Western’, ‘imperial subjects* in Iran, again, echoed in the charges being made against women and those belonging to civil society organizations of Pakistan. The Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran also passed a bill making photographs of women in magazines and newspapers Illegal and another bill that segregated hospitals and prohibited male physicians from attending female patients. (The latter bill was rejected, on the grounds that the country did not have the funds to ensure implementation.) The former

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is being proposed; the latter has already been announced by the MMA government in NWFP. It is of specific use to note that not just are the contents of the discourse the same, but also the strategy of implementation. The implementation in Iran was three tiered: first, through a ‘morality police* as also proposed in the Hisbah Act; next, vigilante action was used to ‘enforce* directives and prop up state decrees, as increasingly evident throughout NWFP and illustrated elsewhere in this study, and thirdly, that steps were taken in gradation - they were not overnight and simultaneous, the whole process was drawn out over five years, again its clear the MMA is not planning any drastic action but a slower infusion. It is also particularly striking to note the reaction of the ‘progressives' of Iran, which has been mirrored in my interaction with many male ‘progressives* in Pakistan with regard to MMA’s policies. Another observation emerges from this specter. Though the Taliban Afghanistan has been endorsed, legitimated and even lionized by some constituents of the MMA (in face of near universal condemnation of that system, it is redundant to further decry it here) the situation in Iran seems to be equally a blueprint for the Sunni dominated MMA, even though Iran is a Shia state. This validates the feminist claim that all fundamentalisms have the same bottom line, and in terms of curtailing women's right, there is no disagreement along any configuration.

i

Social Ethos

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Social Ethos The politics of MMA has been scrutinized and widely debated in Pakistan, with a focus on their doctrinal affinity with Taliban, with regard to their alliances and fallouts with the militaiy and in reference to their political actions. The MMA's social and cultural agenda has been almost peripheral to political discourse, except as a point in order illustrating the group's rigidity, literalist approach and narrow vision. What has been missing is a contextual analysis linking their preoccupation with cultural events and expression and claims of upholding ‘indigenous’ culture with their broader political project. This chapter attempts to thread together MMA’s ‘fringe’ attacks on cultural liberalism and othering processes and traces the gradual but distinct impact they are creating in society and how the policy of coercion invoking religious ideology is engineering a consensus that would ensure MMA’s hegemony in the long term. The chapter will also tiy to show that their attempts at hegemony are politically strategic and not ideologically consistent. An abbreviated cartography of their cultural offensive shows that the MMA is trying to strengthen its image as the vanguard of morality in areas they have a voter base and executive power in. In places where they have not yet managed a power base, they are willing to co-exist and settle for a share in the power pie by accommodating, in fact by yielding to other power holders. From this analysis I theorize that as (and If) the hegemony currently aspired for becomes an entrenched one in the areas that form the MMA’s ‘comfort zones', it will look to aggressively expand its geographical base. The nascent wave of a liberal culture is not an argument to dismiss relevance of conservatism; in fact, it provides fodder for Islamist fundamentalists to prove their

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charge of collective moral atrophy69. The website of the Jamaat-i-Islami Women’s Wing states, “Attempts aimed at inner transformation remain hidden till results have been achieved."70 The currently observed homogenizing trends in religious discourse are a relatively recent occurrence, mainstreamed after decades of efforts to drive out the more pluralist versions of religious practice. Suflism was a more communal, inclusive and self reflective process, and more secular in outlook71. Before introduction of census-like processes, lines between religions were more fluid. Dismantling plural versions was a precondition for militant Islam to grow. The essential ‘fundamentalist* strains of purist Islam (Wahabism) grew and ‘cleansed out* the multiple evolutions of Islamic thought and practice. I argue that the mainstreaming o f this particular school of thought was possible only by marginalizing the then-existing currents of a more embracing Islam. ‘Purist* Islam grew in three tiers; through Militant Islam as Salaflsm and in form of sectarianism. Political Islam in form of religious political parties and Revivalist Islam through the Tableeghi Jamaat (which preaches but has no political aspirations). The Deobandi movement (seen as predecessors of Wahabism) was, pre-partition, essentially an anti-imperialism,

Also, it hinges on the personal outlook o f General Musharraf who has Initiated progressive projects such as media liberalization and enhanced women’s political participation and opted for promoting a ’soft image* o f the country internationally. 70 Jamaat-l-Islami, Women’s Wing article ‘Killing with Culture and Education’, website accessed 8thJuly 2005. 71 Suflism was secular in the sense that it did not have political aspirations, but then bccausc the Sufis of South Asia, with the exception o f very few, such as Shah Inayat, were apolitical in nature, they were patronized by kings and rulers. In turn, most Sufis embraced all into their fold, and were willing to accept any imposed rule, in fact in many places a source of legitimacy for exploitative ruling elites, in other parts o f the world, they have also been dissenting voices.

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anti-estabUshment force with a more overtly political rather than social agenda. Right up to the eighties, JUI, it's main vein in Pakistan, opposed the militaiy dictatorship and was part of the Movement for Return of Democracy (MRD), in effect, qualifying as liberals* in their politics. It was with the spread of Wahabism primarily through the madressah culture that changed them into a statist and reactionary force, preoccupied with moral policing, cultural dominance and expansionism, as reflected in the recently aspired for Hisbah Act. This phenomenon was largely financed by Saudi Arabia, facilitated by the US in response to the threat of a (Shia) Islamic Revolution like that of Iran, and to secure a gendarme in the region in face of Soviet expansionism and the threat of communism via their occupation of Afghanistan. Money flowed into modressahs, into financing the politics of the religious right wing, who gained during this time an unprecedented ascendancy. In the eighties, under the regime of military president General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan witnessed accelerating militarism, mainstreaming of an obscurantist agenda, thousands being recruited and trained for jihad, jailing and torture of journalists and repressive press control, persecution of leftists and progressives, military courts and trials, torture and detention, a conspicuous absence of civil and political rights, all in the name of ‘Islamization’. Discriminatory laws were Introduced, educational syllabi mutilated in the apparent service of religion, entertainment arts were censured and censored. This created a more rigid mindset that encouraged people to forego or forget their multiple Identities and focus on purely religious affiliations, those too, narrowly interpreted by a power minority. This was integral in not just producing jihadis but for collective endorsement for the state’s political agenda, packaged as 'Islam in danger’. I posit that this momentum was gained by deliberate social engineering: a conducive environment was created for it through distortion of culture and altering the weave of Pakistani society. The bans on music, official endorsement of

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the chador char diwari agenda for women and the shrinking of their public and personal spaces, censure of arts and such were not random focuses, in fact, were instrumental in securing the political agenda. General Zia died in an airplane explosion, and his grave in Faisal Mosque (built with Wahabi Saudi donations) purportedly contains only his teeth and jawbone. But bits and pieces of Ziafs body politic are littered across Pakistan’s psychological, intellectual, educational, political and military landscape. The extremist right wing realizes that for long term power dividends, the battle for hearts and minds is more central than the battle for votes and parliamentarians. And to win hearts and minds, ideology, individual self perception and collective national identity need to be reformulated. Cultural reconstruction, therefore, is pivotal. A society that is willing (or compelled) to discard its own culture and vilify its repositories, in this case such as literature and writers, poetry and poets, music and dance and performers, theatre and actors - loses its sense of self and moorings, making it more receptive to the imposition of a new cultural and ideological identity. This is a formula of apparent success, as evinced in a neighboring country. One of the first acts of the Taliban after their takeover of Afghanistan was banning the rabaJb, the indigenous musical instrument similar to the guitar. Musical instruments were confiscated, broken and burnt in public bonfires. Women were veiled compulsorily and the education system attacked. The same method was employed in Iran and Algeria. The point here is not to equate the MMA with either the Taliban or FIS, but to show that the primary control strategy is essentially the same and that there are standard operating procedures. For the MMA ideologues, contentment and enjoyment are for the Hereafter, and cultural expressions that can provide them in this world, are counterproductive. People capable of being creative, finding expressions of joy, elevated

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and connected by ’equalizers’ like music, poetry and other forms of art, are less likely to endorse a militarist, exclustvist, and obscurantist world view that projects people as single dimensional entitles, and more hospitable to coexistence and harmony. The MMA has attempted to operationalize cultural change through two linked strategies: by making official policies overtly, and indirectly by promoting vigilante action. Both have been used together, the first to propose, the second to implement. This allows them to both take credit and disown responsibility, as expedient in that particular context. When the billboards in Peshawar featuring women were blackened, the argument given by the religious right wing was that they had informed the district administration that they thought the advertisements were ‘obscene’ and they should be removed, and since they were not heeded, they went ahead and did it on their own. The signal was therefore that if the State and its organs refuse to implement what they declare as Islamic, then it’s up to the believers to do so themselves. In the same vein, on 24th June 2005, the Dally Times reported that a man in Multan stoned his wife to death for adulteiy. This is very different from the honor killings that otherwise plague the nation. It was not a man murdering his female relative because of outraged distorted sense of ‘honor’, but a man who believed he was carrying out God’s will by giving her the punishment he believed religion awarded. It was the same logic as the distortion of billboards, ‘if you won’t implement Islam, I’ll do it myself. This is in a context where MMA has consistently upheld the Hudood Ordinance (which allows the State to punish adulterers by stoning them to death) as divine and just. MMA is in a position to create official policies in NWFP, and to an extent in Balochistan. For example, they replaced the existing Prohibition of Dancing Act of 1974 that banned women dancing in public for remuneration with a new one. Prohibition of Singing, Dancing and Performing Act that prohibits any music, not just dance, any person, not just

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women, in any place, not just public places, whether for financial gain or not, irrelevant., punishable by both, imprisonment and fine. The Bill adds: 'If a police officer not below the rank of an Inspector, has reason to believe that any offence under this act has been, is being or is about to be committed, he may enter any public place or an educational institution and arrest any person who, in his opinion, has committed, is committing or is about to commit such offence, including the person who abets the commission of such an offence. The offence under section 3 shall be cognizable and non-bail able.’ This allows the government to act even on anticipation and suspicion. Officially, this allows for the police in Peshawar to forcibly enter the private home of a citizen and make them shut down music being played. In one case, the Hayatabad police said they were acting on instructions of the provincial minister of religious affairs by forcing and entering private premises, and switching off a compact disc player.72The MMA sent out a notification barring government employees from attending music functions, stating, “No government servant w ill attend such functions and meetings in which Islamic moral values are not regarded or which are in violation of such values like functions of music by women."73 A Daily Times editorial noted on 18 July 2004 that MMA Minister for Excise and Taxation, Fazal Rabbani, raided some houses in Peshawar’s Hayatabad locality to arrest ’sinning’ men and women who were allegedly ’enjoying the spirits’ and indulging in ‘debauchery*. Among the earliest acts of the MMA on assuming office was closing down of Nishtar Hall, the only public auditorium in Peshawar city, used for performing arts. ‘Music at public places, especially in educational institutions promotes obscenity and free sex. It perverts the society and should be stopped,* says the MMA cleric Mian Nadir Shah to local

72 The News, 26 March 2005 73 Daily Times 10 July 2004, reporting notification issues by NWFP Establishment department on June 28.

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journalists at a press meeting. This sends out a clear signal to their followers. Five people were killed and thirty five others were injured, eight of them seriously, when a bomb was lobbed on a music programme at a marriage party at the Jalala refugee camp in Mardan. The music programme was under way at the marriage function of an Afghan refugee, Zahir Khan, when some men hurled a bomb on the gathering74. On New Year’s Eve, around one hundred MMA activists tried to force their way into the army’s Peshawar Garrison Club to stop the ‘debauchery’ of celebrations. The activists, on hearing reports of indecent behaviour by officers and their families, first reported it to the local MMA leaders who had set up a cell to monitor New Year activities in Kissa Khwani bazaar, in the Karam Ali Shah mosque. After registering their complaint they went forward with their action plan. They had a row with the army officers who assured them by vowing there were no such celebrations75. According to various news reports, areas of district Tank where people insisted on celebrating weddings with songs have been put under siege by militants, leading to hostilities and bloodshed. "Music parties, once a regular feature of weddings in Pakhtun society are giving way to religious sermons by clerics in southern part of the frontier", observes Intikhab Amir in Herald magazine76. As people increasingly conform because of threat and coercion, the ‘preferred methods* eventually congeal into the norm, as 'common sense*. In Peshawar, there was a crackdown on local musicians who had been settled in Dabgari locality for decades. They were accused of ‘promoting vulgarity and obscenity*. Around six hundred artists used to be concentrated in buildings which were baithaks of learning for 7* Dawn. 14 October 2004 75 Dally Times. 2 January 2004 ™ Herald Magazine. ‘Flashpoint Frontier', June 2006

*

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upcoming musicians, and used as offices as people who wanted to hire their services could contact them there. The name of the locality reflects their acceptance and ownership *dab* meaning the sound of the drum, translating into the place of drums, but in a space of a few weeks, they became ‘moral polluters*. Under the MMA government, people gathered under the umbrella organization Tehrik Nijat-iFahashi (Movement for riddance of obscenity) and set on fire the instruments of musicians, while the police remained silent spectators. The action was not led directly by MMA, and some speculate it had more to do with the real estate mafia wanting to occupy the musicians* property, but the point to note is that it was thought that the presence of the MMA government provided an opportunity to attack musicians without much opposition. In Wana, South Waziristan, and Miranshah, North Waziristan, bombs have been repeatedly lobbed over the past two years at music and video stores and the trade has been completely destroyed. In the Dera district and Bannu, blasts in music shops have led to closure of all such outlets. Since there have been no casualties, this practice has not drawn attention, although it is an indicator of escalating extremism and intolerance, as well as a value judgment on arts and culture. In the MMA discourse, these have consistently been equated with fahashi (vulgarity and obscenity). The impact has not been limited to NWFP, despite the general perception that these acts are relegated to and contained in NWFP, and therefore acceptable as long as they don*t happen elsewhere. In Okara, the MMA MNA Qazi Hamidullah (of orchestrating the marathon attack fame) threatened the Okara district government that he would tear down the local cinemas with his bare hands if the administration allowed it to exhibit 'obscene stage plays’. This was on a decision of the Okara Arts Council to permit conversion of a local cinema into a theatre. He was addressing a press conference at the office of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam77. 77 Dally Times. 29 April 2005

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The federal government has remained ambivalent about the MMA’s progressive regression, unless civil society organizations or the international media has raised a ruckus about it. The 2005 Marathon and the following mixed marathons were made into a national and international issue because civic action groups took it upon themselves to confront the right wing and not allow the government to backtrack on its progressive commitments, like it consistently had been doing. Had the government been committed to the agenda it pays lip service to, the warning signs would have been clearer much earlier. A year before the marathon fiasco, the MMA had given a blueprint, a public precursor of their intended action towards what they deem unacceptable. The MMA denounced the annual function, Jashn-e-Chitral, held for years, which attracts tourists from all over the world. It is internationally acclaimed for its local color, and above all, for the annual polo tournament held at a mountaintop, Shandur, the highest altitude polo ground in the world. MMA said they would not allow it to take place as it was un-Islamic. They threatened that 300 fldayeen (individuals on suicide missions for a cause) would descend to attack the celebration. After much negotiation with the organizers78 that led to a two week delay, they agreed to permit it, provided there would be no *UnIslamlc’ activities, such as music and dancing, and drumming would only be allowed in polo matches to spur on the horses. Part of the deal was that it would be renamed “Mela-e-ChitraT since jashn (rejoicing) of all sorts was against religion. Also, all events scheduled for night time were cancelled, and it was to finish half an hour before maghrib prayers. There would be breaks at all prayer times in scheduled activities. Objections were also raised against the uniforms of polo players, which was said to be against Shariat On the actual days riot police was deployed to protect sports spectators. Despite security 78 In the negotiating meeting, there was Maulana Sher Aziz, district ameer of JI. Maulana Saedullah, district chief of MMA and Qari Naseem. district general secretary of JUI-F. Administration represented by DCO & DPO Chitral. The organizers of the Jashn were CAMAT (Chltral Association for Mountain Area Tourism). Daily Times 20 and 24 September 2004

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arrangements activists of MMA flooded the polo ground and football field with water, rendering them unfit for playing any matches79. The stage built for festivities was taken over by the MMA, and its leaders occupied it to continually lecture people on the tenets of Islam80. Just afterwards, the NWFP government outlawed male coaches assisting and training sportswomen. The MMA women demanded restrictions on such sports which promote 'masculinity' in girl students. (MMA Senator Firdous explains competitiveness, physical vigour and activity, determination to succeed as masculine traits not desirable in women). Despite this, the government decided to support a mixed marathon in Gujranwala, without taking any security precautions. The elected MPA of Gujranwala is Kazi Hamidullah, one of the known teachers of Mullah Omer of Afghanistan. An ‘extremist* by any count, he was still allowed to contest elections and won with a comfortable majority. He had been openly threatening to attack the marathon in its run up days, but this was not taken seriously. A look at the background of this area is interesting. A suburb of Gujranwala is Muridke, also known as the nerve center to Jlhadis of the world. Salafl Islam may not be all that popular in the rest of Punjab, but is definitely the order in Gujranwala. In 1977, the town witnessed a movement for the 'enforcement of Nizam-e-Mustafa’ which turned so violent that it was seen by many as the start of a civil war, and eventually led to the removal of the Bhutto government. Even prior to independence, the Majlis-e-Ahrar, a religious and militantly anti-imperialist group had strong populist constituency there. A few days after the marathon was attacked, MMA senior minister Sirajul Haq, while addressing a public meeting in Pabbi, Nowshera district, said, “All those who try to organize 79 News, 16 November 2004 80 In 2006. the Chltral festival has been ‘adopted* by the government, under the ministership of Nllofer Bakhtlar, and the government announced it as a national tourism promotional event. The MMA and vigilantes decided, this time round, that the polo tournament and accompanying events could be held and became 'acceptable*.

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such a race again will be thrown in the Kabul River/81 Once again, these statements were allowed. A month later, the marathon held by civil society organizations in Lahore was attacked. Shabab-i-Milli threatened to attack a show of pop singer Abrar-ul-Haq, after which the DCO of Gujrat cancelled the show. It was to be held at the PTDC hotel, Kharian, and proceeds were going to an organization that arranged dowry for poor girls82. In nearby Gujranwala, police descended on theatre performances and beat up the audience, arrested female dancers and dragged them to the police station83. A pop singer Junaid Jamshed, who has oscillated between the Tableeghi Jamaat and staging pop concerts, between beard and prayer beads to T shirts and ripped jeans, decided to act in a feature film. He was continually threatened by phone calls from his former ideological brothers till he abandoned the film mid way through the shooting, citing security threats. Since then, he has gone back to proselytizing. In Karachi University, the Department of Visual Arts was attacked in 2003, by students of religious right wing political parties, for promoting 'obscenity* on campus. The computers, installations and projects and presentations of students destroyed, the table and chairs wrecked in an attempt to demand the closure of the 'indecent* department. The main objection was the use of music by students for their art work and documentaries. The local administration in Multan issued actresses guidelines on how to dress, the number of dances permissible per play and restriction of hand and feet movement. The district government then set up a monitoring committee, which came up with the recommendation that actresses who have the names of holy persons should change their names into ‘secular* names if they want to continue in this

81 Statesman. 10th April 2005 w Daily Times 21 September 2004 83 News. 3 October 2003

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profession, as acting defies the sanctity of the names. A certain official of the committee, representing the education department, asked the actresses to perform ablution before they come before the committee84. The fact that actresses were told to do wuzu prior to appearing before the male committee members shows not just usurpation of moral puritanical high ground, but the reverence and deference demanded from ‘lesser, sinful* beings. In Lahore, MMA vociferously condemned celebration of basant (the spring festival) and arranged a protest against kite flying. MMA Acting President Qazi Hussain Ahmad in his Friday sermon before the basant festival at the Mansoora Mosque spoke against kite flying, claiming the motive behind this was only to prove that India and Pakistan have “same culture". He urged clerics to speak out against it. “We should make it clear that nations who are defeated in the cultural war can never survive," he said. “Hindu culture is rapidly dominating us and the rulers are consciously promoting this culture. This is the first step towards the government’s efforts to put the Kashmir issue in cold store," he added. He demanded the Punjab government dismiss its adviser for religious harmony, Tahir Ashraft. The MMA then decided to go beyond criticizing present structures and present what for them was an ideal state of affairs, so they created a model pilot district that would conform to their brand of religiosity and showcase their world vision in the microcosm of Noshera district. They formed Salat (prayer) committees as the first step of the Sharia programme, active as of 6th July 2004. The committees, comprising of traders, ulema and public representatives were made at mohalla level to enforce the nizam-t-salat (administration of prayers). It would initially ‘persuade* people to pray, eventually enforcing it. At prayer times, it would be ensured that no business or other activities are carried out, penalized by fine and imprisonment, including hawkers and vendors selling food outside the mosque. The MMA initially 84 Daily Times, 8 January 2005

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proposed to set up the Hlzbah police force to be the implementing arm, but till the force materialized (since passing of Hisbah Act was still underway), the salat committees, without having a legal status, were set up as NGOs for implementation. Six days later, MMA Senior Minister Sirajul Haq announced the same Tanzeem-e-Salaat Committees in Munda, Lower Dir, comprising of the Nazim, the chief of police (DSP), and local elites85. The next day, NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani instructed the police and civil administration officials in Peshawar to ensure businesses are closed at prayer times and people are ‘persuaded* to pray. This was revoked when the traders union, Peshawar Tajir Ittihad, refused to accept the ruling86. MMA states it wants to create an Islamic welfare system. In common parlance, this means taking care of people in this world, not the preparation of their souls for the Hereafter. The rape of a woman councilor in district Nowshera (detailed earlier) was ignored even though she went to meet Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Sirajul Qazi to ask for help. For the MMA. ‘model* governance is one where it becomes evident that religious ritualism is imposed and followed, not one that ensures people’s welfare or guarantees access to justice. It is universally recognized that education is among the best long term investments for nations to bring about sustainable change. With a deep understanding of this, right wing political groups always target educational systems and curricula for making inroads in society. The first group defined as ‘fundamentalists’ in the early twentieth century, as described earlier, were orthodox Christians which had banded together primarily as a reaction to and rejection of the teaching of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution of mankind, which they saw as in conflict with Biblical narratives and would reduce people’s faith in the Adam and Eve Story of Creation87. What Nazi Germany taught children about Jews, w The News. 12thJuly 2004 86 Dawn. 13th July 2004 87 Some states in North America are still not permitted to teach the theory of evoluUon in public schools.

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the contents in Israeli public schools and those in apartheid South Africa and India's 'saflronization* of hlstoiy have followed this tradition. It has been widely accepted that what is taught shapes what is understood and therefore perpetuated. Similarly in Pakistan, religio-political parties have been vigilant on education, one of the main apparatus they have targeted to infiltrate and maintain their ideological hegemony. This was a strategy that gained immense success during the 80’s regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, when text books were distorted under the guise of ‘Islamization\ Many writers have pointed out the fallacies and prejudices now inherent in the educational syllabi in Pakistan88. A report published by the Social Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in 2002, The Subtie Subversion89, compiled these to show that public sector schools were teaching intolerance and not just madressahs, and made recommendations to the government. The MMA, as well as the government of Pakistan challenged this report as biased and. in 2003, the MMA started a public campaign to malign the research organization as catering to vested, foreign interests, ensuring public controversy and promising to take political action against any attempt to bring about change. In December that year, the Musharraf-led regime withdrew from the previous government’s commitment to balance the public education curriculum proposed in a document of the federal ministry of education, titled “National Curriculum 2000 - A Conceptual Framework”. This was against the backdrop of a political drama enacted by both, the ruling regime and MMA. on the LFO that would legitimize General Musharrafs rule. The compromise was reached on the LFO after bitter contestation, and any pressure could jeopardize Musharraf's ticket to legitimacy. The then 88 Among them being Dr. Rubina Salgol. K.K Aziz, Ahmed Saleem , Dr. Nayyar and Dr. Mubarak All 80The Subtle Subversion: The Education Curricula o f Pakistan. Dr. A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Saleem, SDPI 2002

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Education Minister Zubaida Jalal dispensed the idea of curriculum change, while fervently asserting “I am a Muslim and a fundamentalist." In 2004, rumours about a decision by the Curriculum Wing to delete Quranic verses from science books, as well as references to jihad in other parts of the curricula, became the centre of a political storm. The religious right, spearheaded by the MMA and joined in by PML-N90, protested this proposed "secularisation1' of education, within and outside parliament. A national committee was convened, with a high representation of the religious lobby, and reform notions defeated. Soon afterwards, Jalal was replaced by Lt. General Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former chief of ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) who played a key role in supporting the madressah sector during the 80*s Afghan jihad - presumably a move to placate the rightwing. The following year, Qazi Hussain Ahmed condemned the ideology behind the government’s tentative proposal to create an Aga Khan Educational Board to standardize education in the country, claiming it would be detrimental as it would ‘liberalise and secularize* the education system. He claimed the ultimate goal was for “the US to establish the supremacy of its civilization," while addressing the concluding session of a two^day Jihad-e-Kabir Conference at Mansoorah91. The headway this strategy is making is evident. According to an SDPI research bulletin, in December 2003, the Curriculum Wing rejected a proposed English language textbook for Classes IX and X from the Sindh Textbook Board. The Curriculum Wing raised two "serious" objections. One objection centred on a lesson containing a letter by the Quaidi-Azam’s daughter Dina to her father; it was considered unacceptable because she was not a Muslim. The second 90 Dawn, 8 April 2004. Qazi for deep study on AKEB Ideology, i ww.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id= 103859, accessed 12th July 2005

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problem was about a lesson that talked of a family where both husband and wife worked and in which the husband was shown to share household chores with his wife. In February, 2004, the Curriculum Wing expressed its disapproval of a class IV textbook on Social Studies because the book did not contain enough material on jihad92. The battle over education is in essence a battle for the minds of the nation. A national news agency. NNI reported that the MMA itself claims it has created ten to fifteen thousand jobs in the education department in the NWFP93. The International Crisis Group, in its report on education94 interviewed the then minister for education in Sindh. Anita Ghulam Ali, who pointed out the direct role of such appointments in electoral politics. During elections, polling agents are usually assigned from a pool of teachers and educators, since they form the largest contingent of civil servants and, ostensibly, are the learned and moral voices in society. Historically, however, the polling agent has played a critical role in manipulating the ballot to produce favourable electoral results. She resigned from her post when she was given a list of teachers to transfer for favorable results for Musharrafs referendum. The MMA is presumably aiming for the same strategy. In Balochistan, religious lobbies pressured the provincial education ministry to remove diagrams of parts of the female anatomy from science books because they perceived them as obscene. In Bannu, a southern district in NWFP that borders on South Waziristan Tribal Agency, education workers have been physically attacked95. In Diamir.

92 SDPI Research and News Bulletin, Vol 11, No 1, January - February 2004 93 http://pakistanllnk.com/headllnes/Dec03/01/07.html. accessed 15th January 2005 94 ICG Asia Report N°84. Pakistan: Reforming the Education Sector, October 2004 9* Ibid.

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girl's schools have been torched and parents threatened with dire consequences if they send girls to schools96. Parents successfully resisted a campaign spearheaded by the district nazim (mayor), a member of the Jamaat-iIslami, to close an Overseas Pakistanis Foundation school in Chakdara that employs female teachers97. The strategies change with location, so in Chakdara. the MMA proposes to close down schools with female teachers, in Peshawar, they force a complete segregation of campus, as in the case of Khyber Medical College, whereas in Karachi and in Lahore, they insist that students of both sexes should not mix. Another strong indicator of increasing intolerance is the trend in blasphemy cases. The MMA has chosen to ignore its usage as a tool in personal politics or acknowledge any drawbacks to the law, deifying it as divine. Results of this perceived divine sanction: on 28 May 2004, Dawn reported a laborer, Samuel Masih, was killed by the policeman appointed for his protection. His ‘blasphemy’ was throwing litter on the street, near the wall of a mosque. The imam o f the mosque along with dozens others attacked and beat Masih before handing him over to the police. Masih was sent to Kot Lakhpat jail, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was shifted to a hospital. Two policemen were deputed for his protection, one of whom, Faryad All, bludgeoned him to death with a hammer. All stated to the media that he had no regrets for the murder and believes he has secured a place for himself in paradise. In Pabbi, NWFP. Ashiq Nabi was killed by an angry mob of four hundred villagers after a local cleric declared him an infidel. Nabi was chased and stoned till he climbed up a tree to protect himself, all the while begging for his life. He was then shot dead. This happened in Noshera. MMA’s model 96 For detail 9ee Nazlsh Brohi; Violence Against Girls In the Education System of Pakistan. ActlonAld International - Pakistan. 2004 97 ICG Asia Report N°84, Pakistan: Reforming the Education Sector, October 2004

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shariat district. The villagers said it was their God ordained duty to not let such occurrences pass. The inquiry showed that Nabi had quarreled with his wife, during the argument she brought out the Holy Quran and in a scuffle, the Holy Book fell, which she later narrated to her uncle98. MMA projects this law as sacred, which obfuscates the fact that this law was introduced not by pious Muslims in light of Islamic Jurisprudence but by British colonial rulers in 1860 to reduce tensions between Muslims and Hindus as part o f colonial administration. In 1926 it was modified by British rulers. From 1927 to 1982, there were a total of nine cases registered, till it was revamped by General Zia in 1986, Increasing the punishment to life imprisonment or death. Finally in 1992 under the Nawaz Sharif government, the Federal Shariat Court made the death sentence mandatory. Since then, over 5000 cases have been registered99. The MMA refuses to concede that this law is used to settle personal scores with opponents and is invoked more for political mileage than out of a sense of grievous outrage. Nasreen Bibi was arrested for blasphemy in Lahore, but in the course of trial, it turned out that she was raped by a police officer, ASI Bashir Ahmed of Nawankot police station, and when she threatened to take the complaint to higher authorities, he filed a blasphemy case against her (295 b of PPC), assuming that after this charge her defense will not be taken seriously100. In another case, a man, Mushtaq, accused o f blasphemy was gunned down in broad daylight in Lahore after he was released on bail by the High Court101. His son refutes the allegation, claiming that his father was framed by drug dealers in their neighborhood. Because Mushtaq was opposed to the selling of narcotics in the area, the dealers whipped up a fremy and involved local religious leaders who accused him of committing blasphemy. In 2004, Mehdi 96 Reported in various newspapers on 21 April 2005 » Records of National Commission for Justice and Peace, publicly confirmed by Federal Minister for Religious Affairs. IJaz-ul-Haq in 2005. 100 Daily Times, 25 June 2003 »oi Dawn, 9 February 2003

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Hassan was sentenced to life imprisonment on the same charge, whereas he appealed that the accusers were in conflict with him over a property dispute102. A blasphemy charge on two Barelvi Sunnis against the Deobandi sect in Fatehgarh, Lahore, turned out to be a tussle over occupation of a mosque under construction103. Similarly, in the case known as ‘Sangla Hill*. Younis Masih was accused of torching a store room of old copies of the Quran, which led to mobs burning down three churches, two parish houses, a convent, a girls school and a dispensary. In the end, it turned out that the accusers were Muslims who owed Masih considerable gambling debts, which would be taken care of through this104. As with the Dabgari musicians persecution, the accusers feel invoking this law would tilt the balance in their favor because of a ‘receptive* environment. The MMA presence as a substantive political presence has emboldened others to invoke this tool, anticipating unquestioning action against the accused. By constantly referring to blasphemy as a life and death issue for true Muslims, their discourse has further distanced any effort towards using logic and proof in cases, to translating inquiry and doubt on charges of blasphemy as doubt on ‘Muslimness*. The police have repeatedly said that they cannot afford to act neutral in blasphemy cases and can suffer harm if they do not take complaints seriously and act on them. This is not unfounded, as illustrated by the torching of a police station in Shiekhupura after the police released a man accused of blasphemy as he was ‘mentally retarded*. The charred remains of the police station were then bull dozed the following day, razing it to the ground. To end this, the police met a list of demand of rioters, those being to suspend the entire staff of the station and shifting its location to the outskirts of the city, that the accused and head constable

102 Dally Times. 1 February 2004 *03 Dally Times, 26 November 2005 104 Reported In various newspapers through December 2005

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should be arrested and that no case be registered against the protesting mob. Further protest plans were then called of!105. On route to ‘enlightened moderation’, all demands were agreed to by the police and local government. Another spectacular depiction of capitulation of official responsibility by the police was its handling of the blasphemy case of two shoemakers in Lahore. The charge against them was that the embroideiy motif on a pair of shoes resembled the word ‘Allah’. On the complaint of an area resident, the police raided the factory and arrested the owner and his nephew. A blasphemy case was registered, after which the SSP Investigations, Chaudhry Shafqat Ahmed took the matter to the ‘correct authority to decide guilt or innocence’; Mufti Hameedullah Jan, imam of the Jamia Ashrafia, for an edict. The fatwa declared the two men innocent. The extended family members told journalists investigating the matter that it was a business rivalry as the complainant’s brother-in-law owned the competitor shoe making business. However, the police was still uncertain, and reserved its own findings. For further substantiation they approached clerics, the Naib Mufti Tanvir Qadri of Jamia Nazmia Rizvia, Syed Ashraf Rizvi, the Markazi Dar-al-Uloom nazim, Sadaqat Yazdani of Idara Hamd-o-Naat and the imam of the Daata Darbar mosque. The police then got further corroboration from professional calligraphers, just in case there was anyone willing to substantiate the accusers charge. Later investigations by the police revealed that the charges leveled against the accused had been initiated by a group of blackmailers who had been extorting money from the company owners Munir Ahmed and Azeem Ahmed for some time by threatening to accuse them of blasphemy. Even when found innocent, the Ahmeds have complained that their business has collapsed and social contacts and networks finished, and many friends chose to disown them because of the stigma106.

ios Dawn, 29 June 2005 loe Daily Times, 6 September 2003

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In August 2004, a Christian family was forced to leave their residence in Wah Cantt for fear of violence after a ten year old girl accidentally threw pages of the Quran in a trash can, even though the local Muslim clergy, the Church and police were in agreement that there was no deliberate insult intended. Even though Muslim clerics said the incident was an accident, the local population threatened to bum down the Dean family’s residence. The police pointed out that the original Inhabitants of the area were satisfied with explanations, the new Pathan and Afghan migrants who had settled in the area threatened to kill the girl and her family. There was an ‘agreement* proposed by the migrant community that in order to live, the family should leave the area. Not only did the police agree, but the local Punjab MPA of the area affixed his signature to the 'agreement’. The constrictive impact this is having is evident by the changing scope and charges of blasphemy. Whereas the allegations were earlier generally about desecrating the Holy Quran, insulting the Holy Prophet or declaring prophet hood, this has expanded to include interrupting qawwali and throwing garbage near mosques. To note how strong the stigma around this charge is, it is of use to examine the travails of Chaudhiy Bashir who was under trial for blasphemy when he mysteriously died in Bahawalpur’s New Central Jail. He had challenged his conviction in Lahore High court, where his appeal was pending. The imam of the village (Judana) refused to offer his namaaz-ejanaaza after which the local population refused to allow him to be buried in a Muslim graveyard. He had to be buried on private land, and since then, his family has relocated107. The following month, a family expressed reluctance to accept the body of a sixty year old man charged with blasphemy who died in prison hospital. This was because News 7 December 2004

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local clerics issued a fatwa that anyone who attends the accused Idrees Rabbani’s funeral loses faith and becomes an apostate. Angry, baton wielding, slogan chanting youth prevented his burial in any cemetery in Multan, after which the family smuggled the body out at midnight and rushed to Faisalabad for a secret burial108. In 2005, the MMA (along with Imran Khan) were at the forefront of a protest movement based on the evidence emerging through western media regarding desecration of the Holy Quran in Guantanamo Bay prison abuse. Though the anger and anguish was understandable, both parties were silent the previous year, when Christian inmates of Kot Lakhpat jail complained and filed a petition that their holy book, the Bible, was being tom and desecrated in front of them by the police in a deliberate attempt to provoke, hurt and outrage109. Growing intolerance in society is becoming increasingly tangible as people take it upon themselves to avenge wrongs, and going beyond the already extremist eye for an eye philosophy. By early 2006, the blasphemous cartoon controversy that begun in Denmark spread as agitation across the world. The insulting depictions were meant to provoke, and Pakistanis reacted predictably. Apart from the strikes, demonstrations, ransacking, vandalism, stoning and burning of shops and vehicles and other forms of inflicting violence and economic loss on ourselves, two churches (St. Saviour’s Church and St. Mary’s Church) and a school were burnt down in Sukkur. In Sahiwal, the Holy Cross was painted across roads in the city for people and domesticated animals to trample on and cars to drive on. People tended to get frenzied on the issue of blasphemy even prior to MMA’s rule in power. In this already volatile context MMA has upheld hysteria as a righteous toe Dally Times, 14 January 2005 toe Dawn, 29 August 2004. Petition was filed by lawyer Pervaiz Aslam Chaudhry

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reaction, endorsed, in fact, practiced it, leading many to see it as an ‘open and shut' solution to otherwise complex issues, and it has made chances of debate remote by projecting this colonial law as divine. The MMA has consistently and vociferously opposed any moves by the government to regulate registration of cases and amend the blasphemy law. When the Musharraf regime made procedural changes regarding FIR registration, MMA organized protests, demonstrations and black days across the country, lamenting efforts designed to ‘lead to the demise of Islam*. The changes were soon retracted. Two years later, when the issue sparked government interest again, the secretary-general of the Muttehida Majlis-i-Amal, Sindh. Dr Khalid Soomro, criticized Gen Pervez Musharrafs proposal to appoint a committee to review the blasphemy law, telling him to prepare for ‘disastrous consequences*110. The JUI's central party members and provincial members met in Nathiagali and declared they would resist and fight procedural changes tooth and nail111. Within two months of sustained pressure, the federal government assured that neither the blasphemy law nor the Hudood Ordinances would be repealed. This was stated by the federal minister for religious affairs, Ijaz-ul-Haq. whose father. General Zia-ul-Haq was responsible for promulgation of these laws112. For the past two decades, most of the women in jails across Pakistan have been incarcerated under the Hudood Ordinance. Introduction of such laws both criminalizes non­ conformity by legislating morality as in the case of Hudood Ordinance, and endorse violence and discrimination by invoking custom and religion as justification, making crime endemic. Honor killings in Pakistan are currently an epidemic - widespread, viral and out of control. Honor killing is often described as an ancient tribal tradition, but since the introduction of the Qisas and Diyat laws, there has been a manifold increase in the registration and reporting of such cases, including in areas which are not tribal zones as such.

110 Dawn 21 May 2004 1>* Dawn 26 May 2004 "2 Dawn 28 July 2004

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Th e numbers now run Into thousands. It is in this context th at the MMA proposed Hisbah Act must be examined. By creating a morality squad that would implement a standardized moral code to govern personal life, and proscribe punishment, a new wave of criminals would be produced those who oppose MMA’s prescribed ideology and action. It would be a legally institutionalized witch hunt. The intent has been flagged: Maulana Fazlur Rehman, general secretary of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) announced that all those who oppose the imposition of an “Islamic" system in Pakistan are “terrorists".113 The Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) activists are reported to have thrashed a student of the Punjab University’s Social Work Department because he was sitting and chatting with a female class-fellow. They stormed the department and threatened teachers and students alike, if this ‘unlslamic’ mingling was not stopped. In another incident, IJT harassed and detained a male student for taking photographs of his female cousin who was participating in a table tennis match. Each time, the university management and teaching body stayed silent spectators. The IJT then announced they would hold on the university premises a book fair that would have Jamaat-e -Islami and Islamist publications to promote their ideology and philosophy among students. The Vice Chancellor of the university reacted and said this could not be held as they had not sought permission, and the provincial education minister said they would not allow inflammatory propagandist literature to be disseminated on campus grounds. The IJT dared the administration to stop them, and the book fair was held, undisturbed. Consequently, University of Punjab directed its Department of English to purge the syllabi of English Literature being taught at the BA and MA classes of obscenity and other “objectionable" material, including Jonathan Swift’s celebrated “Gulliver’s Travels," Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock," Henry Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews", John Donne’s ii3 Daily Times, 31* August 2004

THB MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

poetry, Paul Scott’s, “Jewel in the Crown," Sean O’ Casey’s Th e End of the Beginning" and Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises," among others. According to journalist Waqar Gillanfs investigation for Daily Times, the registrar received a call from the Very top’ as wife of a former general was concerned enough to request intervention of the President House. Dr. Shahbaz Arif, the person appointed to ‘purge* literature said words like *wine’ and ‘rape* were objectionable in Pakistan’s culture, and the texts would be replaced. Conformity gets assured. The self proclaimed first-ever qualified fashion designer in Peshawar, Sarah Gandapur, held among the first few ever fashion shows in the city. The show was titled ‘Women in Hijaab*. After the text book controversy where state rolled back on all changes in curricula which it itself proposed, in face of opposition from MMA, it decided to maintain status quo in other areas; it was safer. To promote ‘culture’, it reprinted and published novels like Asghari and Akbari - Maulvi Nazir Ahmed’s story of two married sisters, in which the independent minded woman repents and regrets her life whereas the domesticated submissive one is content. This is taught to children as part of curriculum reading. Bahishtt Zevar, a life skills manual for women based on Islamist traditions, often given to women as dowry, continues to be published by state publishers, singles out women as cause of all social ills, to be ‘managed* by strictly regulating their lives. The MMA, its cadres primarily ethnically Pakhtuns are either currently or historically have been part of a tribal culture. As a spillover of doctrine, they are attempting to lead towards tribalization of the state. A non-elected, nominated body, the National Shariat Council was formed in NWFP early in their tenure to govern provincial political and moral direction. It is in effect, an institutionalized jirga, made part of formal state machinery by being located inside the Chief Minster’s Secretariat, and its orders binding on state machinery such as the police, even though it has no legal mandate. This is also a step up for the clergy traditionally, they have not been part of tribal jirgas as decision-makers.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

The Jamaat-i-Islami has since held jirgas on Musharrafs role in War against Terrorism, JU-I on army action in Waziristan, and many others. While jirgas could be just another name for a consensus building process, which is positive by any democratic measure, these councils replicate the power dynamics of the tribal jtrga - there are no women, nor representations of common people, it is a gathering of hand selected powerful people who decide the fate of others, and are beyond questioning by others. While jirgas are participatoiy processes, who participates remains a power formula. And for state level decisions, the process cannot be taken out of state formulations and mechanisms without consequences. Impact: the policc routinely sits in and endorses decisions of jirgas, and what was a parallel justice system is increasingly being merged into the mainstream one. The strategic clarity of merging culture, patriotism, religion and politics can be illustrated in the recent MMA proposal for renaming NWFP, a long standing issue. The MMA proposed the names Dar-ul Islam, Bab-ul-Islam and Islam Var114, in addition to the popularly debated ones.115 Dar-ulIslam and Bab-ul-Islam evoke the period of early Muslim rulers, the ummat and pan-Islamism. The first phrase has been part of a worldview of Muslim writers, that divides the world into Darul Islam, the House of Peace, where Muslims reside, rule and practice religion and Darul Harb, the House of War. As the ultimate ‘othering’ process, the existence of the former makes all other places the latter. In words of leading political Islamist Sayyid Qutb, “There is only one place on earth which can be called the home of Islam (Dar-ul-Islam), and it is that place where the Islamic state is established and the Shari1ah is the authority and God's limits are observed, and where all the Muslims administer the affairs of the state with mutual consultation. The rest of the world is the home of hostility (Dar-ul-Harb). A Muslim can have only two possible relations with Dar-ul-Harb: peace with a contractual agreement, or war. A country with which there is a treaty will 114The News, 30th June 2006 119 Khyber, Pukhtunkhwa, Pukhtunlstan and Afghanla.

THE KMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

not be considered the home of Islam."116 Bab-ul-Islam means Door to Islam, relatively less ambitious in the sense it would indicate the NWFP province is the gateway or in the process of implementing Islam, whereas house/ abode would indicate ‘mission accomplished'. As ANP, MMA's opposing party, regains ground in NWFP by drawing on Pushtun nationalism, the MMA welcomes this naUonalism into it’s fold by including the possibility of naming the province Islam Var, var being Pushtu for door. The legislators in the province will face immense moral pressure, because dissent would mean actively voting against naming the province as an Islamic place. Conflict is intrinsic to politics, and with religious politics, conflict inevitably spills into religion itself. The case of Iran is demonstrative, where the state and regime is Islamic and secular discourse absent from the political arena. Yet there is acrimonious contestation in politics, vis-a-vis religion, about interpretation, implementation, evolution and rigidity of doctrine. Similar internecine warring on ideological terms seems to be germinating in Pakistan. According to a news report in Herald magazine, in March 2006, hundreds of militants attacked and broke up the annual urs celebration of Kalu Qalandar’s shrine in Dera. The following May, at the urs of Pir Sabir Shah in Tank, folk musicians, performers and entertainment providers decided to stay away, in anticipation of similar attacks117. The urs itself is regarded by most as a religious ceremony. In Lahore, under MMA mayor Amir Mehmood, a young Christian Younis Masih requested his neighbor to turn down the volume of qawwalt being played in the neighbor’s home, in respect of his nephew’s on-going funeral. Masih was beaten lie Syed Qutb. A Muslim's Nationality and his Belief, writing compiled at website Islam.com >>7 Herald Magazine, ‘Flashpoint Frontier’. June 2006

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

and announcements made against him in the local mosque, alleging he was preventing the religious cant of qawwali, an angry mob surrounded Masih’s house and called the police to help them and eventually, an FIR was registered against Younis Masih for blasphemy118. He is in Kot Lakpat jail in Lahore, under Section 295C. Interruption of qawwali here is being regarded as blasphemous, while many from the more purist Islamist schools of thought regard qawwali itself as borderline heretical. MMA’s politics of cultural aggression and coercion have generally been limited to NWFP, where they control the government, administration and bureaucracy; to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that border Afghanistan where the MMA has ideological affinity in comparison to all other political parties119; in Gujranwala, where the ruling MPA belongs to MMA (and Is also the only Pakhtun MNA to be elected in Punjab province); and to Lahore and Karachi. Interestingly, in Lahore and Karachi both, the MMA gained enormous strength in Local Body Elections of 2003, while not gaining proportionate direct votes in provincial and national electoral seats, mayors in both cities were MMA candidates, and in both cities, MMA has relied on the student wings of JI, the IJT, for recruitment and muscle flexing, and IJT ‘rule’ campuses of Punjab University in Lahore and Karachi University in Karachi, the only sites of MMA's coercive politics in these cities. Within the NWFP, there has been a resistance to their cultural policies. The ANP organized a musical concert soon after MMA banned public music performances, and folk songs and nationalist songs were sung by acclaimed artists. There have been news reports of elites in the province continuing to have lavish weddings, serving meals, involving songs and dance. In one particular case in Kohat, an MMA MNA’s son was implicated. This not just illustrates resistance of people

“ s Dawn, 15th September 2005 119The Political Parties Act does not extend to FATA so no parties can directly contest there

THE MMA OPPB1V81VS Three Years in Power 2003-2005

and that local culture continues to manifest Itself, but also that the MMA is willing to at times Ignore this resilience, while at times clamping down hard. This selectivity is not arbitrary but measured. They allow the urbane Peshawar-based elite relatively more leeway, as a moral force is ‘groomed’ in Dir, Malakand and Swat. (In Upper and Lower Dir, JI runs approximately thirty FM radio channels preaching jihad, voluntary surrender of TVs, VCRs and CDs and collective torching of them has become a regular ritual and spectator sport in Kabal, Swat, and so on.) In Karachi, they use the university campus for this grooming, but while leading the city government allowed, in fact, facilitated public celebration such as the annual festival of the sea (while a similar event in Chitral was changed), and visible intermingling of sexes in all public places, as they ‘accommodate* the city’s culture. Though the MMA decries liberalization of TV (while proceeding to be seen in eveiy channel as speakers in shows), they have not taken any concrete steps against them, as they have with cable operators. They have not challenged the corporate power and monied industrialists - who are the advertisers that make TV programming in its current form possible. Examples given earlier demonstrate that they have sided with feudal lords, contractors, middlemen and factory owners, at the expense of poor people in Sindh, and sided with the federal government in its crackdown in Balochistan province. This shows that MMA’s cultural offensive is politically strategic and not a blanket endorsement and upholding of religious dictates120. What they ensconce as the correct moral order is tactically upheld where claim to a religious order can legitimate their agenda/ ambition of state power. Given the treatment of minorities vis-a-vis blasphemy and discriminatory stands on women in NWFP, it is possible that they will continue to strengthen their support base in areas

120At no point does the MMA talk about restitution of slavery or write letters to foreign governments to accept Islam or face war, as mentioned in the Holy Book and in religious tradition.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

already ‘under’ their control before looking to aggressively ’export’ to other locations. Where a particular group prescribes a particular culture which in turn defines both morality and legislation, that group's interpretation of law is upheld, the same group’s notions of economy and banking prevail, the group’s perspectives are taught in schools as ‘truth’, portrayed and projected in the media accordingly and the product is an intelligentsia that conforms to the group’s thinking, and all actions that do not conform to the group’s code of conduct are condemned - the group will be the ultimate power wielder. This is as true of fundamentalists as it is of neo-liberals and the globalization agenda. The room for plural co-existence is increasingly shrinking, and spaces in between getting obliterated. Jihad, hijab and McDonalds are frequently cited as polar opposites, but are plotted on the same axis - either a rejection or embrace of globalization, which has come to be understood as a standardized measure of modernity, which in turn has been accepted as an absolute positive value system in itself. Pakistan needs collective introspection. In between the General’s introduction of ‘enlightened moderation*, MMA’s avowal to nationalize ‘Allah ka nizaam* and clamoring between the right wing’s determination to purge society of Westernization and liberals’ cry for secularism, the countiy needs to answer: Whose culture is it anyway? Was the ultra­ liberal city culture of the sixties a norm, or the stranglehold of the eighties? Or were both contrived, co-opting a prior third way? Is the militant and extremist religious right wing distorting culture or upholding it? Are the ‘liberal’ forces trying to hold on to remnant pluralism in culture, or introducing a new imported concept? What is ‘indigenous culture’? Is it always good? When did it start, with Arab Invasion of Sindh or through one of the world’s oldest civilization whose writing we still cannot decipher? And finally, is there a concrete culture that can be hailed as authentic?

THE MMA OPPBN8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Such a questioning of the constructs of culture would show that It is always mediated by a number of political, social and economic considerations. If culture is a process who should steer it? The search for answers is not self indulgence; it is the bedrock of identity politics.

The Way Forward

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

The Way Forward Election machinations aside, MMA came into power on the basis of votes. It is crucial that they complete their term in power, and are free to contest future elections; democracy needs to go on. Pakistan does not need to be ‘saved* by disruptions of democracy. When fundamentalist groups with a popular mandate are excluded from power-sharing, they have an incentive to turn to militant opposition. Historical experience vindicates this argument. In 1991, Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won a comprehensive victory in national elections. The country’s leadership refused to acknowledge their victory and refused to share power. In response, the FIS launched guerilla attacks against the government and the resulting civil war has left over one hundred thousand dead. Egypt’s strictly controlled, exclusive, and dictatorial political system Is another example of how state policies exacerbate militant challenges to the status quo. By denying the parliamentary outlet to Islamist opposition parties, the state has fomented violent opposition by those who seek a stake in power. Syria has been arguably more successful in its belligerently antiIslamist position, but only through the use of extreme violence. Former Syrian President Hafez Assad crushed an Islamist revolt in *82 by massacring over 20,000 Islamist supporters, mostly unarmed civilians, at Hama. The historical record of the Middle East is thus instructive: denying Islamists a stake in power can lead to violent confrontations with the state at the expense of the whole society. Wherever Islamic revivalism has been successful, it has taken the political process unawares, capitalizing on a moment of enthusiasm to translate general sociopolitical discontent into a mass movement. Protracted involvement in the political process, while it elicits certain concessions in the form of new laws and restrictions from the society, also immunizes the political process to its challenge, as it requires replacing a purely ideological orientation with an

THE MMA OFTEN8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

accommodation of pragmatic politics. The MMA is part of the continuum of strengthening of Political Islam globally, with the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections, the Ikhwan-ul Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt and similar trends in Algeria and Turkey. This direct political engagement may lead to compromise, by transforming revivalist movements into political institutions tied to the system. Ultimately, democracy serves as the best check to the growth of revivalism. Since 1989, for instance, the Jamiat-e Ulema-eIslam and the Jamiat-e Ulema-e-Pakistan, the two dominant *ulemaf parties of Pakistan, have both split into factions over policy. The MMA itself has struggled with differences between two main leaders, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed. There were divergent viewpoints on attending of the National Security Council sessions and even on the degree of flexibility on the Legal Framework Order. There is antagonism between the MMA agenda and that of progressive elements. But as long as their agenda reverberates with the electorate, the MMA must be allowed to continue as a legal political entity. Instead of an ouster, progressive forces need to focus on developing an answering ideology. Perceptions need to differentiate between a religious tendency and a political construct, which the MMA has strategically merged. The first seeks salvation, the second power. They have conflated the two by offering salvation in return for power. And this salvation they promise by purging society of what they use their power to define as immoral. They amassed electoral strength in face of a political crisis, not a religious one. But they are using this representational power to create the perception of a morality crisis, and providing its solution: their cultural and ideological hegemony, with the thought that once that is in place, routing them out of power will be impossible. It is essential to desist from seeing their gains as trivial and their social actions as on the fringe of their politics - they are central. That the religious right wing worked as an auxiliary for the armed forces in the past and that the support continued

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

till recent times is well established. For two years post elections, this ‘flirtation’ continued on and off, with the regime fumbling with its double-speak, oscillating between indulgence and at times admonition. In the third year, 2005, the charm seems to have waned and it appears the regime is now serious about challenging them. Yet simultaneously, it has also threatened human rights advocates and women’s rights activists who have dissented from its policies. With its ephemeral ideologies, state axis can continue to shift. It is critical that without interrupting democracy, the regime permanently severs its direct and indirect support to the MMA regressive agenda. Pakistan must start to hold the MMA responsible not just for its actions and statements, but also for its inactions and silence, while clamping down on vigilante action and not conceding to their unconstitutional, illegal acts and postures that contravene human rights, women’s rights, distortion of culture and usurpation of religion. Stronger accountability systems need to be put In place, that disallow them to infringe on social rights of others, to hold them responsible for inflammatoiy statements that are seditious to human rights and civil liberties. The onus of this cannot just lie with the state and its actors. Power is not a concentrated phenomenon, and has many loci, specifically in regard to power constructs of Pakistan. It is important to requisition oppositional political parties. Independent political contestants, land owning classes, leftists, analysts, intelligentsia and others to exercise control and influence within their ambit to keep a check on emerging trends of MMA’s politics, while acknowledging how each has colluded, derived power from and given power to the Islamist politicians. Citizens across the country must not give political entities the power to define the nation, the people must do so themselves. Ideologues cannot use people’s belief system as a weapon against them and continue moral intimidation.

THE MMA OPPB1V8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

The MMA’s social agenda currently primarily impacts groups generally kept at society’s margins: women who do not conform to the mainstream and claim agency and spaces for themselves; artists and people who express their individualism, thoughts and resistance publicly; religious minorities; and those working for societal and attitudinal change. These groups must be seen as indicators. The treatment meted out here should be seen as a marker of future action. In the Afghan refugee camps across Pakistan, the fatwas issued for these groups in the mid-eighties provided a blueprint for the social and cultural ideology later perpetuated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The fatwas were public knowledge, yet not part of public consciousness. Same is true of the religious hardliners in Iran prior to the Islamic revolution as well as the right wing militia in Nigeria and Palestine. Even beyond the Muslim world, the marginalized groups were first to face the brunt of insipient fascism and terrorist ideologies whether they were Hitler’s in Nazi Germany announced in his autobiography years before his ascent to power, or the RSS visions of a religiously cleansed Hindutva India, long part of their public campaigning before the Gujrat pogroms, or the teachings in Israeli state run schools that fuel the ultra orthodox Jewish ideologies that have led to actualizing apartheid like conditions. Instead of dismissing MMA’s societal actions as located at the margins, the country should acknowledge that the Islamist political paradigm is to begin at the peripheries and move inwards, whereas most other political parties use the reverse pattern. This Is what strikes a chord with the populace otherwise overlooked by the mainstream political system. This report does not delve into the constructive initiatives of MMA, but this in no way means that such ingredients are missing. They are not single dimensional, and should not be dismissed as simply regressive forces. In fact, they have formulated an equation that allows them to be Ideologically conservative, but politically radical. They have opposed the neo-liberal, capitalist agenda sweeping across the

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

globe and its detrimental incursions into Pakistan whereas informed critique has been missing in the ‘liberal’ intelligentsia. They have opposed and confronted the regime on populist issues such as inflation, price hike and against army operations in FATA, and core political ones like the National Security Council. They have openly opposed the neo conservative imperialist designs sought under the guise of liberation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their selective radical political stands can play a constructive critical role in keeping a ’sovereignty balance*, and strengthen the essential filter Pakistan needs in its capitulation to capitalist market and international forces and to the US establishment. They have collectively had the most intense outreach whereby they consistently engage with their electorate and have a platform inclusive of the lower middle class and poor people. The MMA in the long run, may even change the profile and nature of class based politics in Pakistan, if so, this would be a crucial positive reform in the country’s political spectrum. On the other hand, there has been too uncritical an acceptance of western standards of progress and civilization. Where many posit secularism as a Christian solution to a purely Christian conflict, since Islam has no organized religious hierarchy to compete with state hierarchy or institutionalized clergy to separate from organized state, for many Muslims, the secular state is viewed as an instrument to eliminate morality from public life and disown religious heritage. Modernity, perceived commonly as a capitalist enterprise, is a concept the west itself has had problems with and backlashes on. Zia Sardar writes “Modernity is constructed as one Western truth, one way of being human, one way of knowing, being and doing, and that way is at the apex." Many argue that whereas in the West, modernity brought the benefits of capitalism, industrialization, and representative democracy, for some others in the world it brought colonization, slavery, economic ruin, a militarization of politics. Increased poverty, the extinction of indigenous

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

people and cultural alienation. Uninformed acceptance of it cannot be prescribed as a panacea. Women’s rights activists, civil society members and progressive leftists accused of being Western and pro US, share ire at the US Establishment with the MMA, and in their capacities, are also fighting the US hegemonic designs. In fact, they have been deciying it for decades, when the religious right wing itself was a cohort of the US. On the other side is the emerging cultural imperialism of extremists who have usurped the idiom of resistance to the Western hegemony. This is shrinking the spaces for the progressive elements within Pakistan, as within all Muslim societies, to decry the rising religious obscurantism, while distancing themselves from capitalist fundamentalism, neo-conservatism and Bushism on the other hand. Condemnation of either, by default, translates into support for the other. The progressive forces urgently need to reclaim this space and form an idiom that allows for an identity formation in sync with humane values, rejecting the either/ or approach without being co­ opted. It must also be noted that vibrant rethinking and reevaluation meanwhile is happening within the Islamic framework in the Muslim world, for instance questioning the notion of Shariah as divine and inquiring into its social construction and cultural cooptation and connection to Muslim imperialism. Increasingly Muslim feminists are claiming space for feminist readings of the Holy Book, refuting patriarchal interpretations and challenging assumed divine sanction of unequal gender relations. It is crucial to track ascendant fundamentalism, while it is equally critical not to fall into traps of Western stereotypes used to justify atrocities, such as those committed by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by Israel in Palestine. It is imperative to be vigilant to not be co-opted into political agendas that use fundamentalist and terrorist activities as an excuse to racialize and abuse the human rights of Muslims. It would be easy to slide into that quagmire, reminiscent of

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

colonialism that used its own notions of civilization and its manifestations as markers. The fundamentalists are not savages to be civilized, whom the rest of society needs to be rescued from. They are political strategists, and should be dealt with politically. Using electoral results as the only indicator for monitoring its 'success* is myopic. The process being as critical as the outcomes, MMA will continue to aggressively claim whatever spaces are available, as is evident in the accelerating ‘religionizing* of all discourses. Their gains are by default, fallings of countervailing forces. Where other political parties have paved the way for the meteoric rise of the MMA, political and cultural forces have contributed to the creation of a national crisis, to which political Islam has responded. While Saudi petro-sponsored Wahhabism has financed mosques and madressahs, the contents of these sermons and curricula address local concerns. The lack of educational and economic opportunities and absence of social services and safety nets have resulted in their popularity. Accelerating consumerism, income disparities and the clientist nature of the Pakistani state has led people to look for alternatives. Ascendant fundamentalism is primarily a utopian rejection of current political formations - the fallout of consistent political failures of regimes and political parties. So while the MMA is attempting a cultural change, they cannot be understood purely in cultural terms. Their cadres are drawn from madressahs, jihadists are their subsets and disconnect with the mainstream is deliberately fostered. But it is too convenient to explain the political Islamist aggression simply by the culture of Its perpetrators. It is convenient and self serving for the liberals, national government and U.S establishment in specific to explain it as an outcome of terrorist culture without taking into account the changing political contexts and relations to which it is a response.

THE M1ULOFFE1V8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

While political Islam, In Pakistan's case via the MMA, can and does challenge status quo and power distortions, it should not be supported as a counter-hegemonic force, as it seeks to replace one oppressive system with another. As true of most forms of identity politics, the myriad of societal Injustices and political marginalization, globally and domestically, finds expression in fundamentalism through reactive political Islam. Injustices, power imbalances and „ extremism are man made, and can be righted with political action far more effectively than with militaiy operations, crackdowns and confrontations.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Postscript I finished writing this report in February 2006. Since then, the MMA has predictably continued in its vein, such as by issuing guidelines as to how NGO workers should dress when in NWFP. On the other hand, the current Musharraf-led government has now squarely confronted the MMA, vis-a-vis the tabling of a bill to alter the Hudood Ordinance despite vocal opposition and discord (they are certain to retreat yet again), and cracking down on extremism by ordering all Friday sermons across mosques of the country to be recorded and assessed for incendiary material. Women's bodies continue to be the site for articulating political power struggles and the canvass on which ideological identities are affirmed, through parliamentary controversies on marital rape, adultery, fornication and chastity. At the nadir of irony, the MMA has been accused of blasphemy for tearing up a proposed law for women’s empowerment that cited Quranic verses and hadith. There have also been regional developments such as the cooling of Pakistan India relations following the Mumbai train blasts, the cameraderie once more seeming ephemeral. These events occur on a contextually comprehensible, though undesirable, continuum. But with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent war - and contested claims of victory - it is critical to step back and contextualize and locate MMA in the international spectrum of political Islam, whereas this report has previously focused on MMA’s local graph. The electronic and print media blitzkrieg brought this war into every home with round the clock live coverage, and as Israel had always been an emotive topic, there had been palpable anger and outrage. The MMA crested an anti-American tide when it came into power in 2002, in context of the war waged by the Allied Forces in Afghanistan. With MMA’s demonstrations, protests, and avowals of Hizbullah’s defense, it could possibly gain again.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

This time there is also a critical variable. In Afghanistan, most people condemned the war, but veiy few supported the Taliban as an alternative. Similarly in Iraq, Saddam Hussain had done nothing to endear himself to the masses in Pakistan in fact he was almost seen as an irreligious despot (yet there ~ was public euphoria at the relative difficulty faced by the warmongers in achieving Victory’). This time, people are not just anti-Israel, but also pro-Hizbullah. In its rhetoric, the MMA has ‘owned’ Hizbullah, and cast its (disputed) victory as a victory for Islam and triumph for MMA. It seems to be using this current public support for a nationalist Islamic party of Western Asia to aggressively market and expound its own domestic agenda, assuming the goodwill is transferable. If their speeches are taken as an indicator, they are hoping people will make a quantum leap and believe that Hizbullah has stood strong before foreign aggression backed by western imperialism simply because it is in literal terms the party of God, as if their ammunition supply, guerilla tactics, contingency planning and years of training is irrelevant. By the MMA logic, Hizbullah invoked Islam and won, so since they also invoke Islam, they will also triumph. On an auxiliary tangent, the MMA has also started a slur campaign on ‘ladeen’ (sans religion) politicians, on which it places Benazir Bhutto higher than Musharraf on the ladder of sin. Tempting though it may be, it would be erroneous to lump the MMA together with Hizbullah or any other group manifesting political Islam in Western Asia or elsewhere. These groups are predicated on different political crises and treating any assortment of them as monolithic, united and interchangeable serves only the interest of either the political Islamists themselves who gain mileage out of perceived synchronicity, or the neo-conservative war hawks that thrive politically and economically on the reductive civilizational-clash thesis. The ‘Muslim world*, a contested term, is not monolithic; neither are its religio-political movements. They cannot be understood through a linear, single dimensional logic. There

THE MMA OYTBH8IVB Three Years in Power 2003-2005

is, of course, religion as a common denominator, but what Is invoked and addressed through this idiom varies. For example. MMA alms for Pakistan to be ruled solely by Shariah. Hizbullah says It has no such aspirations of making Lebanon an Islamic, Shariat-run state and is only motivated by resistance to Israeli aggression. Hizb-ul-Tahrir recognizes no Muslim government as legitimate and aims to restore the Islamic Caliphate. Muslim Brotherhood has renounced armed struggle and says it will only work through non-violent, political engagement. Hamas refuses to give up its armed struggle. Turkey’s Justice and Development party (AKP) is defined by many as no longer Islamist but ‘believing secularists*. FIS claims to be heirs of NLF, which fought for Algerian independence. The MMA did not sustain its campaign against foreign (US) troops in FATA for more than two months. Its constituent party, JI, had opposed Pakistan’s Independence. The context in which Islamist consciousness emerged also varies - in Pakistan it was a defensive knee-jerk reaction after the religio-political right wing marketed Islam as the reason of Pakistan’s existence; Islam outlined an identity that necessitated a separate entity from that of India. In this there was a collusion of the armed forces to perpetuate this consciousness as it invoked religion to serve its militarist interests in first Kashmir, then Afghanistan. Through the Zia era of the eighties, Islamist consciousness was forcibly, violently imposed. While Pakistan marched down the path of political Islam because o f state endorsement and support, in most Western Asian countries. Islamist consciousness grew in spite of, in fact, as a reaction to the state. For over half a century of Pakistan's history, political Islam has represented status quo; in Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt among others, it represents radical change. Political Islam was ushered in the Western Asian region after the disintegration of Arab anti-colonial, secular nationalisms and the vacuum created after the failure of leftist forces.

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Nascent political movements brought in religion as their value added, but retained the nationalist aspirations of past populism, leading to what Olivier Roy notes as the “nationalization of Islamism." Hamas challenged Arafat's PLO not on points relating to Islam, but for “betraying" the national interests of the Palestinian people. Hamas rose to power when PLO’s secular nationalism failed in delivering progress and justice in Palestine1. The Yemenite "Islah” movement was active in the re-unification of Yemen (with the South being Marxist), against the wishes of the Saudi protectors. The Lebanese (Shia) Hizbullah stresses the defense of the “Lebanese nation" and Christians and Sunnis have rallied behind It. During the Gulf War of 1991, each branch of the Muslim Brothers* organization took a stand in accordance with the perceived national interests of its own country (e.g., the Kuwait branch approved U.S. military intervention, while the Jordanian branch vehemently opposed it). In neighboring Africa, Hassan Turabi used Islam as a tool for unifying Sudan, by Islamizlng the Southern Christians and pagans. The Algerian FIS claimed to be the heir of the NLF of the anti-colonial war, and did not find roots in Morocco or Tunisia. The appeal and support was nationalist. Because of the recent war in Lebanon and the street power and public opinion that have rallied behind Hizbullah, I would like to focus more on that, and challenge its face value as a religious-political party. In keeping with the regional paradigm, political Islam in Lebanon grew out of the debris of the fall of the secular, nationalist left. The Lebanese Communist Party was the first to launch attacks against Israel after its 1982 invasion of Lebanon under the banner of ‘nationalist resistance*. Its main social base was the Shia community in southern Lebanon. Its 1 Successive Israeli governments discreetly supported the Muslim Brotherhood in the Occupied Territories while the Brotherhood was exclusively attacking the PLO. which it viewed as a gang o f nationalists and Marxists, all traitors to Islam. The Brotherhood gave birth to Hamas.

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mandate was overtaken by Hizbullah's ‘Islamic resistance', which also had Shias as its target constituency, and promised to address the grave economic injustices they faced. “There were increasing Shi'i perceptions that the Lebanese left had failed, both in securing greater rights for the poor and in protecting the south from the fighting between the PLO and Israel," writes Lara Deeb2. Like other regional Islamist players. Hizbullah continues to draw on nationalist visions. In an interview with Mahir Tan3 in 2003, Hassan Nasrallah, the force behind Hizbullah, continuously stressed the point that the organization's only aim was resistance to Israel, and that it is a Lebanese organization and had never taken armed action outside Lebanon. Without going into the veracity of that contested claim, it is clear that there Is no articulation of a pan-Islamist appeal or invocation of the borderless ummah or universalizing of experience. His predecessors had enforced strict dress codes for women and bans against drinking and playing cards. Newsweek magazine highlights that “Those puritanical standards were eased in areas under Nasrallah's control, and life became more relaxed in other ways, too. By 1993, Nasrallah was meeting with the Maronite Christian patriarch and trying to shore up relations with all communities."4 When Nasrallah was questioned by Tan about this change, he said "One cannot talk about one type of ‘Islamic community'. Every society has its own dynamics. To compare the Shi'a in Lebanon with the Shi'a in Iraq or Iran was meaningless. And Lebanon and Iran have different cultural backgrounds." Hizbullah since long has abandoned its call for the establishment of an Islamic state in Lebanon.

2 Lara Deeb. Middle East Report Online, MRIP. July 31, 2006. 3 Mahir Tan, The Beirut File: Interview with Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, In State of Nature, Religion and the Modem World, Autumn 2005. 4 Newsweek, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ld/14324460/slte/newsweek/

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Robert Pape, in his recently published book5 researching all known 462 suicide bombings across the world between 1980 and 2004 also draws the conclusion that much of the motivation of suicide terrorism is nationalist and antiimperialist as opposed to religious extremism. According to his findings, of the 41 suicide attacks orchestrated by Hizbullah between 1982 and 1986, only eight of the suicide bombers were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty seven were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and Arab Socialist Union and three were Christians including a woman who was a school teacher with a college degree. All were bom in Lebanon. Pape writes “Previous analyses of suicide terrorism have not had the benefit of a complete survey of all suicide terrorist attacks worldwide..... What these suicide attackers - and their heirs today - shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation.... What nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective. Most often, it is a response to foreign occupation.” Hizbullah does invoke religion. And it has been involved in criminal acts that have led to suffering for common people on both sides of Lebanese borders. It has orchestrated suicide acts In fighting off Israel's aggression. It is militant. But it is not fundamentalist; it does not aim for an Islamic state, it does not crack down on women or try to change Lebanese culture and society (anymore - unlike its early years).

9 1 have not read this book in its entirety, but have seen many excerpts available on the internet. Robert Pape, Dying to Win: Why Suicide Terrorists Do I t University o f Chicago. Gibson Square. 2006.

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Hizbullah Is radical, violent, nationalist and anti-imperialist. The MMA is fundamentalist and llteralist, but not radical, and ambivalent about its links with militancy. The A1 Qaeda is a supra-nationalist, militant, terrorist network. Hizbul-Tahrlr is a supra-nationalist non-militant network. There are immense variations and contrasts among all groups that are lumped together as Islamists, and policies need to correspond to their nuanced identities. The failure to understand the realities and nuances of Muslim countries and the resort to sweeping blanket judgments are best epitomized by the US President George Bush’s often repeated stupendous and ridiculous claim that 4those people’ hate the USA for its civil liberties and freedom. In the wake of Israeli attacks in Lebanon in 2006, the current configuration attributed to the ‘axis of evil' (which changes with time, on and off, to include also North Korea, Iraq, Libya and Cuba) Includes Syria, for sponsoring ‘Islamo-fascism*. Syria is not just a secular country, but one that is highly repressive of political Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood, among the earliest of pan-Islamist movements emerged as a strong force in Syria in the sixties, and was ruthlessly countered by its army with near constant warfare for the next twenty years. In 1982, the Brotherhood led a major insurrection in Hama, and the Syrian military responded by bombing, killing around 15,000 people, forcing members to escape into exile. The group is still not allowed to function openly and political dissidents who as much as sign a petition with exiled Muslim Brothers, are routinely arrested by the police6. Thus, while the Syrian regime does not brook any Islamist opposition internally, it keeps connections with Islamist movements outside its own borders. But it is also selective of which groups it supports. The US Council for Foreign Relations acknowledged that Syria is hostile to Osama bin Laden’s Islamist network7. Syria completely supported war on terror, not just with rhetoric but with action, offering Washington ‘key information’8. But the 6 Assaf Khoury.The Middle East Branch of the Axis of Evil, Znet, 4 August 2006. 7 http://www.cfr.org/publlcatlon/9368/ 8 Seymour Hirsh, Democracy Now, Thursday. July 24th, 2003

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regime, belonging to the Alawi sect of Islam openly supports Hamas (Sunni) and Hizbullah (Shia), both active In neighboring countries. The question arises - Is the motivation of Syria's support then militant religion based solidarity or a Machiavellian protection of its regional interests? While the world powers agitate against countries of Western Asia and other Muslim countries for ‘Islamic fascism*, there is a need for a reminder that this agitation is not new-found, in that powerful Western states also agitated (and acted) against the secular, left leaning progressive leaders of these very countries before the sweep of radical religious movements. Mossadegh of Iran nationalized oil (to redistribute income in the interest of his people), Nasser in Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal (to finance a critically needed dam that funding agencies refused to support, after which President Anwar Sadat promoted Islamism by bringing the Muslim Brotherhood into prominence as an antidote to the leftist populist Nasserism), Arafat symbolized a territorial war with Israel - the American proxy in the region, Algeria fought for independence against a colonizing force and so on. Not only were they despised for measures that worked against Western financial interests but a direct role was played in their collapse. Dictators like Saddam Hussain were welcomed, tainted record and all, before Western economic interests were challenged by him. This Arab/Muslim demonology does not have a ‘use by’ date. So how much is it about religion? Is it then a clash of civilizations, or clash of fundamentalisms, or clash of barbarianism, or simply a clash of interests? Conflicting interests have resulted in the global north developing dualist approaches and hypocritical politics, which immeasurably adds to the appeal of political Islam. The anger that is generated from the double standards rife in the world is well outlined In the emotionally charged web log of a nineteen year old girl living In Lebanon: “They tell you that a Jewish state is democratic but a Muslim state is evil; that Palestinians living in Palestine have no rights and no state but Jews living in the rest o f the world can *return' and live there as rights-bearing citizens; that Jesus

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uxwts you in Palestine unless you are a Palestinian or a Muslim: that Washington, London and Tel Aviv can produce nuclear warheads but that Tehran is a global threat fo r daring to enrich uranium; that legitimate resistance is terrorism but state terrorism is *self-defensem ; that the desert state o f Syria is Nasrallah's courier and puppeteer but that Washington is an honest broker and a partner fo r peace; that Iran is a rogue state fo r arming Hizbullah but that America is freedom-loving fo r arming Tel Aviv; that we cannot talk to Damascus or Tehran unless they renounce themselves out o f existence first; that expansionism and regime change are necessary for American and Israeli national security but that the Arab and Muslim winners o ffree and fair democratic elections should be arrested in the middle o f the night and imprisoned in secret police detention centers fo r attempting to rule. They tell you that three soldiers captured by Hamas and Hizbullah are worth the collective destruction o f Palestine and Lebanon but that civilians kidnapped by Israel are not worth the price of a printed page; that the tens o f thousands o f Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and the hundreds of Afghanis, Pakistanis, Arabs and others at Guantanamo Bay are worth less than the abandoned pets o f the residents of North Israel fleeing to the bomb shelters. They sing sanctimonious hymns to the glory o f international law as they veto it into the oblivion o f a million shellfragments. ” The point, then, is not to romanticize or lionize Islamist parties, but to highlight that they serve as articulation of people's legitimate issues of marginalization and injustice. Currently, the fodder is the simultaneous nationalist message and the promise of internationalist identity and support base of the ‘periphery’ aided immeasurably by imperial hegemony and global hypocrisy. The solution offered through religiopolitical structures is a package deal of attentive politics, reactionary measures, fundamentalism and deference. The invocation of religion itself is political, because there is an inevitable process of selection of what to invoke. Islam has been cited to oppress and lock away women and also to allow them to work and study; Islam has been declared to outline

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democracy and by others as being unlslamic; people's human rights have been suppressed in the name of Islam, whereas others have said it presented the first blue print of a human rights charter; it has been used to suppress minorities and by others to allow minorities to coexist. In all cases, no advocates of political Islam suggest writing to foreign governments to convert or face a war, nor do they advocate restoring slavery. This selectivity serves a politics. All these ‘religious’ groups are primarily political, and address political crisis. The corresponding strategies need to address the politics, not the religion. The approach has to be secular. The tendencies among some left-inclined groups to see all manifestations of political Islam as a resistance, therefore progressive and therefore to be supported is an act of intellectual alchemy that will produce not an elixir but radioactive residue. There is a plethora of literature connecting nationalisms with parochialism and subjugation of women9. Owais Tohid points out that Islamist groups involved in territorial or international power disputes focus on that as the immediate crisis and turn inwards to societal policing only when that is resolved or a temporary status quo achieved10. Fundamentalists equate secular critique of the maledominated Muslim culture with a Western imperialist attack on Islamic authenticity, cultural norms and way of life. It is critical not to retreat in the face of such charges of cultural treason. Understanding western imperialism to be the only destructive force is myopic. The world is too complex to run on simplistic axioms such as the enemy’s enemy is a friend. Shahrzad Mojab, in her incisive critique makes the point that US Imperial power and Islamic fundamentalisms do not form a contradiction but a symbiosis that in the past has coexisted and benefited from coexistence, such as other seemingly polar concepts of slavery and capitalism, democracy and racial 9 See for example works of Valentine Moghadem. Nina Yuval-Davis, Andrew Parker, Rubina Salgol. Mlnoo Moallem and Norma Alarcon. 10 In a private discussion on differentiating between Islamist revolutionary and fundamentalist movements.

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apartheid. They have coincided and colluded11. Fundamentalisms and capitalism also converge: in their patriarchal, militaristic, imperialistic and misogynist politics, thriving on a siege mentality and a culture of violence and fear.

11 Shahrzad Mojab, The Middle East: Under the Reign o f Imperialism and Fundamentalisms, University o f Toronto thesis, hosted currently on www.mostlywater.com.

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End Notes 1

Examining armed militancy with reference to the MMA, the

following editorial of Daily Times (17/08/04) makes a few points: •

Ataur Rehman. leader o f the Jandullah splinter o f A1 Qaeda who tried to kill the Karachi corps commander, was formerly o f the student wing o f the Jamaat-e-Islaml and had broken away from it to form his own extremist group.

•

The two doctor brothers, Akmal and Arshad Waheed, arrested in Karachi for allegedly providing medical assistance to the Jandullah terrorists, were members of Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA) which had a history o f being active in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The PIMA is said to have the ‘sponsorship’ of the Jamaat-eIslaml.

•

A1

Qaeda's

top

fund-raising

agent.

Khalld

Sheikh

Muhammad, was arrested In Rawalpindi from the house of a local Jamaat-e-Islami leader. Also, the terrorists arrested in the wake o f the attempt on the Karachi corps commander's life have admitted that they had freely moved among the Deobandi seminaries In Karachi. During the Mullah Umar interregnum, three Deobandi leaders, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Maulana Samlul Haq and Mufti Nizamuddln Shamzai, were his important allies In Pakistan with the blessings o f Islamabad. •

JUI Punjab vice president, Maulana Haq Nawaz

Jhangvi,

set up the infamous Slpah Sahaba In Jhang.

W ith his

murder in 1990 began a series o f killings that have not yet stopped. The 20 cells o f A1 Qaeda terrorists at present thought to be active in Karachi are supposed to have past connections with these parties in the MMA. u Observers say there are cracks appearing In the MMA, and there Is a personality clash between Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Maulana Fazlur Rehman. More than a personality clash, it Is their experiences and track records that has put them on different road maps. The JI stands for pan-lslamlsm, and has the long term Ideological hegemony in mind, by Institutionalizing theocracy. The external factors showing persecution o f Muslims worldwide boosts his cause for a bipolar world; the Islamic world against the rest. On his call, the imam of Ka’aba, the imam of the Medina mosque, rector o f A1

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Azhar ail convened In Pakistan in 2005. The organization is networked with Islamist groups from Egypt to Indonesia. JI also sent out a global appeal for Muslims to unite against desecration o f the Holy Quran, reported to have occurred at Guantanamo Bay. This defilement horrified Muslims and nonMuslims alike across Pakistan, the JI in particular, sought international mileage through it. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, a seasoned politician also recognizes that anti-establishment rhetoric serves to expand its domestic base and secure maximum concessions in bargaining processes. Also, the JI strongly sided with General Zia, and their support base was eroded by this, since the anti-establishment idiom has always had the strongest currency in Pakistan. Given the international political mapping o f Muslims, it would be much harder this time to appear in accord with a m ilitaiy regime, that too. a pro-US inclined one, even though it was acceptable in the past. JI understands that in Pakistan, being confrontational to the center (also translated into hegemony o f central Punjab) increases popularity in other provinces, and being in power is the best way to lose out. as Illustrated by successive changes of government between the PPP and PML. JUI-F, on the other hand, is primarily a madressah based, ethnically Pushtun entity. It was part o f the antl-Zla MRD, so this is their first taste o f power. JUI-F also holds the largest stakes since it constitutes the government in a province and a half, so If things come to a head with the Musharraf regime, it stands to lose Its seat o f power. This shows why Maualana Fazlur Rehman is more amenable on issues such as the LFO and the National Security Council. He also recognizes how crucial legitimacy is for the General, and that he will allow leeway as long as the balance Is not tipped too far.

Appendix

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Appendix Muttahlda Majlis-e-Amal: A Profile Muttahida MaJlls-e-Amal, which translates into United Council for Action, was a political alliance of six religious political parties. These were: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) - Fazlur Rehman Group Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-S) - Samiul-Haque Group Jamlat-e-Ulema Pakistan (JUP) Jamiat-e-Ahle Hadith (JAH) Tehreek-e-Islami Pakistan (IIP) Since then, JAH and JUI-S have left the alliance after bitter recriminations. JI - Jamaat-e-Islami Formed in 1941 as a reformist movement for Indian Muslims, it was the creation of Sayyid Abu Aala Mawdudi, who is among the most influential political philosophers to impact contemporary Islamist politics globally. Initially, his writings developed in Tarjuman al Quran, a journal of which he was editor. JI as an organization did not Initially take the traditional form of a mass political party but as a well knit, disciplined group of personally and ideologically committed cadres, devoted to cause and leadership, who were to transform society from within. From the time of Independence, it became a pressure group that challenged the Islamic credentials of the Muslim League. It prescribed to gradual change, envisioning a government inspired by and obedient to Shariah, with a top down approach first aiming for individual intellectual transformation, then a movement, then through social and humanitarian work, mass contact, and gradual shift to Islamization.

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Its base is the educated middle class and it leads the right wing politics with its articulate ideologues, who use not just the pulpit but serious as well as populist publications, such as newsletters, magazines and websites, and have made inroads by influencing students and supporters entrenched in socio-political structures. It has a developed social program that does welfare work and commands goodwill amongst middle class, even when not commanding their vote bank. Mawdudi initially was opposed to the idea of Partition, aiming to convert all of India to Islam, but then repositioned himself to dominate the debate over Pakistan. JI was instrumental in passing of the Objectives Resolution that became a preamble to the Constitution, making it Islamic in character. It campaigned against the Ahmadis in the fifties, and agitated for separate electorates for religious minorities in national elections. In the *58 municipal elections of Karachi, it won 19 o f the 23 seats it contested and were confident of gaining seats in national elections, though by then Ayub Khan Imposed martial law. During the 1964 elections held under Ayub Khan, it opposed his modernist regime and supported the candidature of Fatima Jinnah, though it had denied the possibility of a woman as head of state. During the first genuine elections of 1970, it decided to contest on as many seats as possible, though it won only four seats. The party faced not Just electoral defeat but also repression during Z.A Bhutto's era. In the anti-Bhutto PNA movement, it provided strategy, rank and file to the struggle. Its popularity grew in the Zia years because of his direct patronage and the Islamist character of his regime - he credited it as the only legitimate political party. The lesson it learnt was the need for electoral alliance for a mass base, and then in (*88, *90 & *93), partnered with PML. Through these alliances, the party claims, it realized its aim for a religious state was not shared by others, for which it had to make too many compromises, corruption was rampant in other parties, and independently, they did not have the strength to do it on their own. So in 1997, they decided to boycott national elections. Between *97 and the 2002 elections was a time for introspection and fine tuning a refined political

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programme after analysis of the political spectrum of Pakistan. JI, and in specific, its leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed was Instrumental in crafting of the MMA as a political project. Qazi Hussain has played a substantial role in the upsurge In the party base, as earlier it was primarily an urban group with power bases in Karachi and Lahore, and now he has broadened its constituency even in the rural areas, in particular in the NWFP. JUI - Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-IsIam JUI stems from the Deoband school of thought, and draws religious and political inspiration from the Deoband madressah in India. In the International Deoband Conference of 2001, held in Peshawar to celebrate the 150th anniversaiy of the Deoband madressah, a recorded message of Taliban leader Mullah Omer was broadcast, a public reiteration of ideological synergy. According to its constitution, it operates all over Pakistan with a central office In Lahore. Members have to be adult Muslims not associated with any other religious or political party. To allow affordability, the membership fee is ten rupees, payable every three years. An amir, naib amir and general secretary head the party. The general body is made up of party members from all levels. For every five provincial members, there is a representative at the central council, and to be a council member, a three year party membership is a requirement. At the time of Independence, JUI, headed by Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, was the successor of Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Hind. JUH was an active partner of the Congress- Party in the struggle for Independence from the British Raj, under the leadership of Maulana Hussain Madani, and was against Partition, believing that the Muslim nation was supra-state and could not be geographically located or contained. Yet there was a faction that differed from its parent body and supported the Muslim League’s demand for a separate Muslim state on doctrinal grounds - this set later emerged as JUI. In its new profile, it remained relatively inactive till it was revived in 1956 by a convention held in Multan, and Maulana

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Ahmed All Lahori was elected president and Maulana Mufti Mahmood vice president. They vociferously were part of the anti Ahmedi movement of this time. Two years later, Martial Law was declared in the countiy and political parties banned, which curtailed JUI’s activities. They started their activities under the same leadership, with the name of a separate organization, the Nizam-ul-Ulema. They challenged the regime, and were vociferous against the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance which granted women many rights, on the grounds that it was against Islam. In the nationwide elections of 1962, the party was once again activated and Mufti Mehmood was elected to parliament and Maulana Darkhwasti elected Amir of JUI. In 1968, they adopted a new manifesto, explicitly aiming to establish an Islamic state in Pakistan, in which the head of state and government would be from the Ahle Sunnat sect. Two years later, in national elections. Mufti Mahmood defeated Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, as both were contesting from the Dera Ismail Khan constituency. JUI joined Wali Khan’s National Awami Party to form the provincial government in NWFP. Mufti Mahmood was made Chief Minister even though JUI had four members elected to national parliament, compared to NAP’s thirteen, in a house of forty. He immediately banned alcohol and declared interest in financial transactions against Islam. JUI attacked Jamaat-i-Islami on doctrinal differences, dubbing Mawdudi an agent of imperialism. It sought alliances with Bhutto’s PPP and were not opposed to the concept of Islamic socialism, and also entered an alliance with Pakistan Labor Party to work for eradication of the exploitative capitalist system. The break with Bhutto came over the army action in Balochistan. Mufti Mahmood’s cabinet resigned in protest to the dismissal of the Balochistan provincial government, against the backdrop of an insurgency in Balochistan province, was the first to question results of the 1977 elections and helped start the PNA demanding democratic reform and constitutional guarantees for smaller provinces.

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Maulana Fazlur Rehman, son of Mufti Mahmood, was elected deputy general secretary of the party after his father's death in 1980. The split in JUI was over siding with the Benazir Bhutto government. Fazlur Rehman wanted to side with her and struggle against the military dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq, as the party had fought against earlier military regimes. Many others in the party opposed this, as Zulfiqar Bhutto and Mufti Mahmood had been mutually antagonistic and party divides were clearly bitter. This resulted in two groups, one being JUIF, the other known inintially as JUI Darkhwasti, later JUI - S (Samiul Haq group). JUI - F : Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam [Fazl-ur-Rehman Group] NWFP and Balochistan became strongholds of JUI F through the eighties, as they made and funded madressahs and carried out relief operations in refugee camps across these two provinces. This factor among others, translated into electoral gains in the 1993 election, where it allied with Benazir's government and Fazlur Rehman became Head of Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Assembly. In the '97 elections, Fazlur Rehman lost his seat in Dera Ismail Khan, and in response, JUI-F announced a separation from the electoral process and the struggle for an Islamic revolution. Drawing inspiration from the Taliban adventure in Afghanistan, in anticipation of similar events in Pakistan, JUI began eulogizing the Taliban, harassing women's rights groups, campaigning against secular and western’ ideas as well as small scale attacks against television cable providers and video shops and formed an alliance to curb the spread of Vulgarity, obscenity and immorality* in the country. When Pakistan, under the Musharraf regime decided to support and become a coalition partner in the War on Terrorism, JUI-F was at the forefront of a public agitation movement against this decision, calling for a jihad against both, the United States and the Musharraf regime. Their protest calls brought thousands of men to the streets, though the movement did not sustain or sufficiently capture public Imagination, and tapered off after collapse of the Taliban. JUI-

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of has also been at the front of the movement against regulation of deenl madaris, madressahs. After the 2002 elections, JUI formed the majority government in NWFP, and almost all of its cadres are drawn from madressah graduates. Fazlur Rehman was appointed Leader of Opposition, despite Bhutto's PPP having secured more seats than the MMA. He is known as the more 'flexible* player in MMA. and after a confrontation with the government, agreed to support the Legal Framework Order, which allowed General Musharraf to continue as Chief of Army simultaneously being President of Pakistan, and the' formation of the National Security Council, which legitimizes and Institutionalizes army intervention in the political and all other affairs of the country. MMA decided to boycott sessions of the NSC, after allowing Its formation. There was public disagreement between Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Fazlur Rehman as Rehman was willing to attend NSC sessions. JUI - S: Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam [Samiul Haq Group! Initially headed by Maulana Darkhwastl till mid-eighties, he withdrew in favour of passing on leadership to Maulana Samiul Haq. It is headquartered in Akora Khattak, in Samiul Haq's famous madressah, Darul Uloom Haqqania, also the alma mater of Taliban leader Mullah Omer. The group were adamant supporters of the freedom struggle in Afghanistan (against the Soviet Union), and therefore closely allied with the military regime. In the party-less elections of *85, Haq was rewarded with senator-ship. In protest to the US led war on terror, JUI-S mobilized hundreds of people for street agitation, yet in the 2002 elections, they won only one seat in NWFP. JUI-S has been erratic in its support for the overall MMA alliance, even before quitting it. He went public with his reservations regarding monopoly of decision making within MMA being appropriated by JUI-F and JI, and said the alliance kept deviating from its vision. He defied party principles and accepted Chairmanship of standing committees for both himself and his son.

THE MMA OFTEJCSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

JUP: Jamlat-e-Ulema-e-Paklstan Primarily a Barelvi sect group, they came Into existence prior to Independence, and allied themselves to the Muslim League in pre-partition India. Founded by Ahmed Raza Khan in Barielly in Northern India, it is located not far from the Deoband, Deobandls understood to be the counterpoints, if not nemesis of each other. Deobandi is a more rigid and purist school of thought similar to Wahabism, rejecting local transmutations, whereas the BareMs prescribe to sainthood and shrine worship traditions and ‘niaz nazar. In addition to affirming the authority of the Holy Prophet, they make a case for a sacred space for saints who are conceived as religious guides who mediate between God and humans. After the initial efforts to work with PML to establish an Islamic system in the countiy (their leader was among the signatories to the 1973 constitution), JUP entered electoral politics to implement the Nizam-e-Mustafa, and in the 1970 elections, they got seven seats in the national assembly and as many in the Sindh assembly, and became the main opposition party to Bhutto. In the *77 elections, they blamed their rout on rigging in elections and joined the PNA (Pakistan National Alliance) to fight for Bhutto's ouster. Through the eighties, under the leadership of Shah Ahmed Noorani, the party's political significance declined. There was much wrangling within religious groups about correct religious interpretations of Islam and religious rites. Also its support base was mainly in urban centers of Sindh, lower middle class, small traders and merchants, and this vote bank was fractured by the creation of MQM. In all consequent elections, it faired poorly, gaining marginally only in Punjab where it contested as part of Awami Ittihad group. It has a history of pragmatic alliances, and had close links with the secular Tehrik-i-Istaqlal. JUP has been besieged with internal party politics, spearheaded by tensions between its president and secretary general. In 1990, its central committee expelled Noorani and replaced him with Abdul Sattar Niazi. As a result, the party split into two factions, followed by bitter infighting, uniting again in 2001, with Noorani once more as President.

THE MMA OFPER8IVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

After the 2002 elections, Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani was made senator and chairman of MMA. He died in 2003, his death leading to controversy regarding the next leadership, with different groups vying for the slot. JAH: Jamiat-e-Ahle-Hadis This was initially a group of ulema that took on the shape of a political party during the seventies. It rejects all schools of Islamic law and is heavily influenced by the Arab Wahabis. Wahabis prescribe to strict adherence to religious duties, a typical feature of which are morality brigades and police forces. With strong links with Saudi Arabia, the party has made gains in areas gaining economic prosperity. Headed by Sajid Mir, the party is connected to violent militant groups such as Lashkar-i-Tayba. TIP: Tehreek-e-Islami Pakistan The only Shia party in the MMA, it has been renamed twice, formerly known as Tehreek-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-e-Jaffria, then became Tehreek-i-JafTariya-e-Pakistan, and currently, TIP, emerging in different forms every time it is banned. It is known to have links with Slpah-e-Muhammadi, which is known for its sectarian violence, banned by Musharraf in 2002. It is headed by Maulana Sajid All Naqvi, who was suspected of Involvement in the murder of Azam Tariq, who headed the Sunni extremist group Sipah-i-Sahaba, and the party was banned. In April 2004, Allama Naqvi was released on bail and had a press conference, along with Qazi Hussain Ahmed to state that TIP continues to be a member of the MMA and termed the pressure put on TIP as a strategy to fracture MMA.

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years an Power 2003-2005

Acronyms ANP ASI BA CDs CII DSP ECGs FATA HRCP ICG IJT IMIM ISI JI JUI JUI (F) JUI (S) LFO LHRLA MA MMA MNA MPs MPA MRD MYC NAB NCSW NGOs NNI NWFP OIC PIF PML PML (Q)

Awami National Party Assistant Sub. Inspector Bachelor of Arts Compact Discs Council of Islamic Ideology Deputy Superintendent of Police Electrocardiographs Federally Administered Tribal Area Human Rights Commission of Pakistan International Crisis Group Islami Jamiat-i-Tulba Islam Muttahida Inquilabi Mahaz Inter Services Intelligences Jamaad-I-Islaml Jamiat-I-Ulema-I-Islam Jamiat-I-ulema-I-Islam (Fazal-ur-Rehman Group) Jamiat-I-Ulema-I-Islam (Sami-ul-Huq Group) Legal Framework Order Lawyers for Human Rights of Legal Aid Master of Arts Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Member of National Assembly Member of Parliament Member of Provincial Assembly Movement for Restoration of Democracy Mill! Yakjehtl Council National Accountability Bureau National Commission on the Status of Women Non-Governmental Organization News Network International North western Frontier Province Organization of Islamic Countries Pakistan Islamic Front Pakistan Muslim League Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-I-Azam Group)

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

PNA PPC PPP PPPP RSS SDPI SMC SSP TIP US WTO

Pakistan National Alliance Pakistan Penal Code Pakistan People’s Party Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarian Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sustainable Development Policy Institute Sindh Medical Collage Senior Superintendent of Police Tehreek-e-Islami Pakistan United States of America World Trade Organization

TH * MMA OrPEHUVB Three Years in Power 2003*2005

Glossary AhmedU sect founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian; also member of that sect Al-Huda: chain of religious schools for women and girls chain of religious schools for women and girls Amir: chief Ayasfv waster, philanderer Baithak: place for receiving guests Banja: loose garment worn by women to cover the whole figure Chadar char diwart literally ‘chador’ and four walls, confining women within the home Dors: literal meaning “lesson;" generally used to mean religious instruction Darul A man: State run shelter homes for women Dawaa: A call, invocation (for God’s helpl Dupattcu scarf like garment worn on by women Fatuxv religious edict Hart landless peasant Haycu modesty Hijaab: veil, head covering scarf Hudood Ordinances: laws promulgated by military dictator. General Ziaul Haq in 1979 Jihadk from ’jihad* literally effort or striving; hence one who strives [fights] in the cause of Islam Jirga: council of elders Kaflr-e-Azam: the great unbeliever Khulfa-e-Rashideen: the first four Caliphs of Islam Lakh: one hundred thousand Loya Jirgcu people’s assembly or council Madressah: religious school Masjicb Muslim place of worship Maulana: learned man, teacher; term also used for head of religious party MaulvU learned man, prayer leader Mohtasib: judge Mujahicb warrior in the cause of religion

THE MMA OFFENSIVE Three Years in Power 2003-2005

Naib Nazima: assistant administrator Namaaz: Muslim prayers Namaaz-e-Janaza: funereal prayers Napakistan: land of the impure Pathcuv of Pashtu speaking tribe Pukhtun: of Pashtu speaking tribe Qawwli: a form of devotional singing with rhythm popular in the sub-continent Qisas and Diya: laws which give relatives of the victim the right to forgive or demandcompensation from the accused, thus making murder a compoundable crime Salqpsm: from salqf, men of piety and faith in past generations Salaat Muslim prayers Shariah/shariat Islamic law Shia: literally 'follower,* the followers of All Sipah Sahaba: Sunni political organization known for its opposition to Shiaism Tableeghi Jamaat: literal meaning “preachers collective;** a missionary organization whose members mission is to propagate Islam Ulema: plural of alim, learned; used to describe leaders of religious political parties Ummah: people or nation, used for Muslim people[sl Urs: ceremonies observed at death anniversary of saint or holy man Wahabism: sect of Muslim revivalists founded by Mohammad, son of Abdul Wahab, bom AD 1691; based on the assertion of the paramount authority of the Quran with the Traditions Zamindar: landlord Zina Ordinance: law relating to adultery, fornication and rape; one of four Hudood Laws