Islamization in Pakistan

[18] Under the rule of Pervez Musharraf, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), a coalition of Islamist political parties in Pakistan, called for the increased Islamization of the government and society, specifically taking an anti-Hindu stance.

[23] Usmani asked Pakistanis to remember Jinnah's message of Unity, Faith and Discipline and work to fulfil his dream:to create a solid bloc of all Muslim states from Karachi to Ankara, from Pakistan to Morocco.

The first formal step taken to transform Pakistan into an ideological Islamic state was in March 1949 when the country's first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, introduced the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly.

Figures such as the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Al-Haj Amin al-Husseini, and leaders of Islamist political movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, became frequent visitors to the country.

[39] After General Zia-ul-Haq took power in a military coup, Hizb ut-Tahrir (an Islamist group calling for the establishment of a Caliphate) expanded its organisational network and activities in Pakistan.

[45] In the year or two before Zia-ul-Haq's coup, his predecessor, leftist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had faced vigorous opposition which was united under the revivalist banner of Nizam-e-Mustafa[46] ("Rule of the prophet").

[15] Sectarian divisions between Sunnis and Shia worsened over the issue of the 1979 Zakat ordinance, but differences in fiqh jurisprudence also arose in marriage and divorce, inheritance and wills and imposition of hadd punishments.

Under Zia's Prohibition Order, this punishment was replaced by one of whipping of eighty stripes, (citing an Ijma (consensus opinion) of the Companions of Muhammad since the period of the Second Caliph Umar).

[66] Critics complained that the law had become a way for "vengeful husbands and parents" to punish their wives or daughters for disobedience, but that "whenever even small changes" were proposed, religious groups and political parties staged "large scale demonstrations" in opposition.

Its establishment was less than clean and simple, as between 1980 and 1985, "provisions relating to the FSC's operation were modified 28 times, through the mechanism of 12 separate presidential ordinances and were incorporated into the Constitution in 14 subsections covering 11 pages of text.

[80][81]: 37–8 In the lower district courts, there is "considerable variation in the enforcement and interpretation of the Hudood laws", with "much more enthusiasm" for implementation of them in the Punjab and urban Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly NWFP) than in other regions.

As of 2014 no one has been legally executed for blasphemy, but 17 people are on death row for the crime,[94] and a considerable number of those accused of or connected with the issue have been killed at the hands of mob or other vigilante violence.

[9] The government introduced and encouraged banks to adopt financing schemes based upon murabaha and/or musharaka[106] Zia did not consider land reform or trade union activity to be part of Islamic economics.

In a statement addressed to the poor and working class he opined: It is not for the employers to provide roti, kapda, aur makaan (bread, clothes and homes) [a reference to a well-known slogan used by Bhutto's PPP].

[107] His martial law government also made it clear that it "was not committed to redistributive agrarian policies and described the land reforms as ordinary politics to reward supporters and punish enemies".

[110] Trade union and grass roots demands for higher wages, better working conditions, social security, old age benefits and compensation for accidents, were "no justification for protests and strikes", and treated as disorder to be suppressed.

[118] According to Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist opposed to fundamentalism, under Zia the government organized international conferences and provided funding for research on such topics as the temperature of hell and the chemical nature of jinn (supernatural creatures made from fire).

[129] Also ironic was that under Zia's rule (according to leftist cultural critic Nadeem F. Paracha), economic prosperity expanded the country's urban middle and lower-middle-classes, and spread the popularity of Western 1980s fashion wear, hairstyle and pop music.

[153] Anis Ahmad of the International Islamic University credits controversy over the "fundamentalism" of Islamisation to the failure of "Muslim elites" to understand "the very nature of divinely revealed law.

"[154] He believes these elites have adopted the "intellectual culture and political system" of the British colonizers due to which they have used a "sociological approach" to understanding Sharia law,[154] and to assert that Islamic punishments such as amputation, stoning and lashing are "bedouin", "tribal", "premodern", "harsh", "outdated" and "barbaric.

Author Ian Talbot has accused it of appearing "to have reduced a great faith tradition, rich in humanity, culture and a sense of social justice, to a system of punishments and persecution of minority groups.

A blurb for a book of essays on The Islamization of Pakistan, 1979-2009 published by the Middle East Institute, sums up the 30 year impact of Islamisation beginning with Zia as, "a country’s founding creed violated, much of its resources misspent, and its social fabric rent".

"[118] Academic Charles H. Kennedy, wrote in the mid-1990s that while during the Zia administration "hardly a day passed in which one or more of the issues of the program were not the focus of political debate in Pakistan," the process had relatively small impact, as policies were "already in place", "cosmetic", or were "left unimplemented".

[161] [162] Kennedy's explanation for why the rhetoric on Islamisation would be so extravagant while the reality was so modest is that both proponents and opponents had incentives to exaggerate its scope and impact—doing so would rally their respective political bases of support.

[178] The Supreme Court addressed several important issues pertaining to Islamisation around this time period (during Benazir's time in office), including decisions that found unIslamic provisions in the Pakistan Penal Code pertaining to murder, manslaughter and other forms of bodily hurt,[179] and in most of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's land reforms of 1972 and 1977[180] (ruling for example that Islam does not countenance compulsory redistribution of wealth or land for the purpose of alleviating poverty, however laudable the goal of poverty relief may be.

[184] In 1990, Tanzil-ur-Rehman was appointed to the Federal Sharia Court and about a year later (November 1991) issued a "monumental decision" (Faisal vs. Secretary, Ministry of Law) that appeared as though it might put an end to interest-bearing loans and accounts in Pakistan.

It specifically declared invalid two Islamic Modernist interpretations that avoided strict prohibition: considering anti-riba Quranic verses (2:275-8) allegorical, and use of ijtihad (independent reasoning) of the issue based on ascertaining the public good (maslaha).

[187] After much stalling by the government and bureaucracy, the Faisal case was upheld in 1999 by the Shariah Appellate Bench in the "Aslam Khaki" decision, with detailed orders to start the interest free economy.

Two justices of the Shariah Appellate Bench resigned rather than take a new oath of office, and a new appeal with new judges found many "errors" in the Aslam Khaki case and overturned the ruling of a couple months earlier.

[198] A poll conducted by Gallup Pakistan during January 2011 of over 2,700 men and women in rural and urban areas of all four provinces of the country, found 67% of Pakistanis responding yes to the question In your opinion should government take steps to ‘Islamise’ the society?