by SADIA TOOR
This tendency of the Pakistani establishment to turn to Islam—and, more importantly, to Islamist forces—in order to undermine progressive politics was evident from the very beginning and created the conditions for the increasing power of the religious right within Pakistani society and politics. Even then, this increase in influence did not proceed in any kind of neat fashion; this is a story of contingencies, contradictions, breaks and spikes. The Ayub regime, for example, went from actively targeting the Jama’at-i Islami to making strategic alliances with it when faced with mass mobilization on the Left. The secular and “socialist” Bhutto contributed to this trend (and set the stage for General Zia ul Haq’s efforts to Islamize Pakistan) by reaching out to the Gulf Arab states for moral and material support, and by choosing to appease the increasingly belligerent religious groups rather than strengthen his working class base. And it’s worth noting that even Zia ul Haq, a US-backed military dictator, the head of the most brutal regime in Pakistani history, met significant resistance when he tried to operationalize his Islamization project.
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