Panel Organizer:

Prof. Imran Ali - Lahore University of Management Sciences
Prof. G.K. Lieten - Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Abstract

In its brief history of over half a century, Pakistan has faced much turbulence and instability. While economic growth rates have been at a Third World average, indicators of social development have been lower and vast areas have been excluded from development. A number of factors have tended to exclude significant segments of the population and have led to a persistence of mass poverty. These include inadequate expenditure on the social sector, entrenched gender disparity, the retarded development of democratic institutions, urban/rural dichotomies, etc.
A contributory factor in the unequal wealth and income distribution has been the concentration of political power, within a restricted segment that has resisted a transition to democratic values. The persistence of military rule over many decades has underscored this failure of political institutions.

Of particular importance has been the rise of Islamic orthodoxy, which received official state support in the 1980s and 1990s and which now seems to be on the decline, although nowadays a new phenomenon, the increasing importance of Islamic political parties, has emerged. Although Islam had provided legitimacy to the state ideology, politics and policy-making had remained essentially secular, albeit increasingly from the 1980s onwards with continuing concessions to religious politics. The importance of Islamic religious organizations is a relatively recent phenomenon, at least in terms of electoral performance.

There is a need, to analyze the role and significance of the religious factor in political developments and state policies in Pakistan. There are conflicts and congruencies at various levels:

- economic power and democracy
- religion, secularization and modernizing values
- the conflict between ethnicities
- religion and power politics, including terrorism.

Interesting papers on these topics would help to clarify the recent history of Pakistan and indicate its future viability as a secular nation state.

Humeira Iqtidar, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Jamaat i Islami Pakistan; Learning Through Opposing

The paper aims to outline and understand some of the changes that have taken place in the role of the Jamaat-I-Islami in Pakistani politics. During the 1950s and the 1960s the Jamaat-I-Islami in Pakistan transformed from ‘a reading group made up of like minded individuals', in the words of one of its first nazim-e-alaa, to a political organization. The paper outlines the initial role of the Jamaat in Pakistani politics during the 1960s when it emerged as a key organizer and mobilizer against ‘the left'. I shall then trace some of the lessons learnt by the organization from unions, women's organization and others it opposed. The changes this interaction brought about in the organization allow us to understand, at least in part, the changes in the Jamaat's stance on many issues including education, women's role , feudalism, and democracy. The lessons that the organization learnt and the changes it has made provide a glimpse also into the subtle interplay of ideology, ambition and political opportunism of its leadership and activists. At the theoretical level, the paper aims to scrutinize more closely the dichotomy between modern-secular and fundamentalist-backward currently dominant in academic literature on Muslim fundamentalism.

Imran Ali, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Economic History and Business Policy, Lahore Cantt, Pakistan
Islam, Power and Political Legitimacy in Pakistan

The paper will provide a historical and contemporary context for a discussion of the problem of political legitimacy in Pakistan. Now approaching a population of 150 million, Pakistan has a complex and diverse society. The paper will identify and discuss the impact of major historical transitions, to highlight the contours of political and social authority, and of economic resource absorption, in this region. Within this broader context the paper will assess the role of such themes as pluralism, political legitimacy, the nature of power articulation, the strategic role of social classes, Islamic nationalism and contemporary militancy, the issue of minority status, and the impact of globalization.
It will be argued that the configurations within which these processes operate are not of recent origin. They have evolved over time and some continue to be deeply embedded. The paper will analyse the evolving structure of power, including its interface with religion, in three sequential historical periods: at the eclipse of the Mughal empire, during British colonial rule, and in post-1947 Pakistan. Continuities and discontinuities in the two earlier periods not only impacted significantly on the nature of power and political legitimacy in contemporary Pakistan, but it will be argued that they also differentiated this region from other parts of South Asia. These processes in turn had important consequences in Pakistan, not only for democracy and decision-making in its internal development, but also for its place in international geo-politics.

The role and significance of Islam in the evolution of state and society in Pakistan is anything but simplistic. Emerging stereotypes that invariably apply the ‘fundamentalist' framework might well overlook the more complex lineages of power and authority, socio-cultural predilections, and ideological positioning. Analysis of extant balances and asymmetries could help to better comprehend Pakistan's contemporary situation, as well as, according to some, its problematical future.

Martin Lau, Leiden University, Faculty of Law, Leiden, The Netherlands

Islamic Juristocracy: The Changing Role of Courts in an Age of Islamisation

In the recent past, Pakistan's experiments with the Islamisation of its legal system have been scrutinised primarily from a human rights' perspective. The theme of Islam and human rights is a pressing concern throughout the Muslim world and it is thus not surprising that Pakistan's introduction of a whole raft of Islamic criminal laws in 1979 would give rise to a substantial body of literature dealing with this issue. The focus of this body of research has been on the impact of the new Islamic criminal laws on the legal status of women, and, to a lesser extent, on the rights of religious minorities. Associated and connected with this area of research has also been a more recent body of research into the impact of customs on the legal status of women, especially the incidents of honour crimes, forced marriages and the control exercised by jirgas and shuras.

Research on and analysis of the second significant Islamisation measure, namely the introduction Islamic criminal law in the form of qisas and diyat in the first half of the 1990s, has been less extensive. In fact, there is not a single monograph dealing with this area of Pakistan's criminal law and even within Pakistan's human rights' community there has been only occasional interest on the changes brought about by the Islamisation of the law of murder and bodily harm. This constitutes a serious gap in our knowledge of the link between human rights and Islam: a recent SOAS PhD thesis found that on average eight out of ten convicted murderers escaped any form of punishment on the payment of blood money.

Even more neglected has been the constitutional dimension of the Islamisation of laws in Pakistan. Has the role and power of courts been affected by the changes in the jurisdiction of courts? What has been the role of judges in the face of these legal innovations carried out in the name of Islam? The constitutional dimension of the Islamisation of laws has assumed additional facets caused by a combination of factors. Amongst them is the coup d'etat of 1999 and its aftermath and the war against Islamic terrorism in the wake of the Operation Enduring Freedom, which dislodged the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The main objective of this paper is a re-assessment of the Islamisation of laws in Pakistan by viewing and analysing them from a constitutional, rather than an exclusively human rights' focused, perspective. It will be argued that in many respects the Islamisation of laws has been a judge-led process designed to enhance judicial power and even independence. The judicial nature of Islamisation has, in turn, lead to stronger incentives for the executive to interfere with and to limit judicial independence.

A re-assessment of Pakistan's experiences with court-centred Islamisation is of relevance also for other jurisdictions. Both iraq and Afghanistan have included in their respective constitutions a provision which allows courts to review legislation of the basis of Islam.
Adeel Khan, University of New England, School of Health
New ‘Others' of the Postcolonial States:The Case of Pakistan

It is the janus-facedness of nationalism that after succeeding in achieving its own state it repudiates almost everything that it had fought for. Pakistan is one example of such nation-states. The demand for Pakistan was based on the plea that in an independent India Hindu majority will rule Muslim minority under an extremely centralised state system. It was also argued that Hindus and Muslims were two distinct communities, which had nothing much in common.

After the partition, however, the founders of Pakistan not only adopted the same centralist policies that they opposed but also made them even more drastic. Moreover, when the ‘other' Hindus, were no longer there Pakistan's rulers created its new ‘others', this time, from within its own Muslim community.

This paper proposes to look at the discriminatory and intolerant policies that the Pakistani state adopted to silence various regional and ethnic groups who had started demanding autonomy and control over their own regional resources. Examples will be given to show how the new nation-state had started treating its own people even worse than the colonial government did.