Islam in Pakistan

File:Badshahi mosque from outside.JPG

The Badshahi Masjid, literally the 'Royal Mosque', was built in 1674 by Aurangzeb. It is one of Lahore's best known landmarks, and epitomizes the beauty and grandeur of the Mughal era

About 97 percent of all Pakistanis are Muslims. Official documentation states that Sunni Muslims constitute 77 percent of the population and that adherents of Shi'a Islam make up an additional 20 percent. Christians, Hindus, and members of other religions each account for about 1 percent of the population.

Islam in Pakistani Society

Islam first appeared in what is today Pakistani Sindh in 712 CE when a young Syrian general named Muhammad bin Qasim invaded the region and conquered large portions of what is today eastern Pakistan. Islam was also brought to the South Asia in the eighth century by wandering Sufi mystics known as pirs. As in other areas where it was introduced by Sufis, Islam to some extent syncretized with pre-Islamic influences, resulting in a religion traditionally more flexible than in the Arab world. Two Sufis whose shrines receive much national attention are Data Ganj Baksh (Ali Hajweri) in Lahore (ca. eleventh century) and Shahbaz Qalander in Sehwan, Sindh (ca. twelfth century).

Data Durbar in Lahore, Pakistan is the tomb of Ali Hajweri, eleventh century Sufi. People come each year to pay their respects and to say prayers. The large complex also includes Jamia Hajweri, or Hajweri Mosque

The Muslim poet-philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal first proposed the idea of a Muslim state in the subcontinent in his address to the Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930. His proposal referred to the four provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and the NorthWest Frontier--essentially what would became the post-1971 boundary of Pakistan. Iqbal's idea gave concrete form to the "Two Nations Theory" of two distinct nations in the subcontinent based on religion (Islam and Hinduism) and with different historical backgrounds, social customs, cultures, and social mores.

Islam was thus the basis for the creation and the unification of a separate state, but it was not expected to serve as the model of government. Mohammad Ali Jinnah made his commitment to secularism in Pakistan clear in his inaugural address when he said, "You will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State." This vision of a Muslim majority state in which religious minorities would share equally in its development was questioned shortly after independence. The debate continues amid questions of the rights of Ahmadis (a small but influential sect considered by orthodox Muslims to be outside the pale of Islam), issuance of identity cards denoting religious affiliation, and government intervention in the personal practice of Islam.

Schools of Thought

The majority of Pakistani Muslims are Sunnis (estimates range from 90-75%). However Sunni Islam in Pakistan is not uniform due to the existence of various schools of thought. The majority adheres to Barelwi version of Islam. The Barelwis cling to the sufi practices and follow strictly the Hanafi school of thought. They are stronng in the rural areas of the Punjab and Sindh. nevertheless prominent Barelwi institutions also exist in Lahore and Karachi where wealthy businessmen support their activities. Tahir-ul-Qadri's Minhaj-ul-Quran-movement represents a modernised version of Barelwi Islam. . The Deobandis represent a more puritan form of Sunni Islam. This school came into being after 1867 when the religious seminary Darul Uloom was set up in Deoband 100 km to the North of Delhi. They cling to the Hanafi school of law but reject most Sufi practices. The Deobandis are particularly strong among the Pathans in the NorthWest Frontier, Balochistan and Karachi. Their educational centers are the Akora Khattak madrasa near Peshawar and the Jamia-i Binoria in Karachi. An important subgroup of the Deobandis is the Tablighi Jamaat which is committed to missionary acrivities. Its annuals conferences in November draws up to 1 mio adherents to ist centre in Raiwind. The Ahl-i Hadith are the most puritan but also the smallest of the Sunni schools of thought. They reject bot Sufism and the four schools of law. They were founded by scholars who have studied under the Yemeni scholar al-Shawkani in the 1830's. Their strongholds in Pakistan are the central Punjab (especially Faisalabad and Gujranwala), Baltistan and also Karachi. Since the 1920 they are very closely associated with the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. The Jamaat-i islami a political party committed to the thought of Abu l-Ala Mawdudi is sometimes considered a fourth school of thought.

Twelver Shiis are esimated to form 6-20% of Pakistan's Muslim population. They are strong in the Northern Areas, Pakistan, Karachi and parts of the Punjab (especially Sialkot and Jhang). Violent clashes between Shias on the one side and Deobandis and Ahl-i Hadith are frequent, particularly in the Shia holy month of Muharram. Pakistan also hosts two communities of Ismailis. The Dawoodi Bohras are concentrated in Karachi, and smaller congregations exist in other big cities. They follow their Dai al-Mutlaq based in Mumbai and are usually businessmen. The followers of the Agha Khan the Nizaris consist of a group of Gujarati origin concentrated in Karachi and mainly consisiting of businessmen and professionals, and several rural communities in Chitral and the Northern Areas.

Politicized Islam

From the outset, politics and religion have been intertwined both conceptually and practically in Islam. Because the Prophet established a government in Medina, precedents of governance and taxation exist. Through the history of Islam, from the Ummayyad (661-750) and Abbasid empires (750-1258) to the Mughals (1526- 1858) and the Ottomans (1300-1923), religion and statehood have been treated as one. Indeed, one of the beliefs of Islam is that the purpose of the state is to provide an environment where Muslims can properly practice their religion. If a leader fails in this, the people have a right to depose him.

Faisal Mosque, located in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan, was built in 1986. It's one of the largest mosque in Asia.

In 1977 the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto outlawed alcohol and changed the "day off" from Sunday to Friday, but no substantive Islamic reform program was implemented prior to General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization program. Starting in February 1979, new penal measures based on Islamic principles of justice went into effect. These carried considerably greater implications for women than for men. A welfare and taxation system based on zakat and a profit-and-loss banking system were also established in accordance with Islamic prohibitions against usury.

Zia's Islamization program was pursued within a rather complicated ideological framework. His stance was in contrast of the popular culture, in which most people are "personally" very religious but not "publicly" religious. An unexpected outcome was that by relying on a policy grounded in Islam, the state fomented factionalism: by legislating what is Islamic and what is not, Islam itself could no longer provide unity because it was then being defined to exclude previously included groups. Disputes between Sunnis and Shi'a, ethnic disturbances in Karachi between Pakhtuns and muhajirs, increased animosity toward Ahmadis, and the revival of Punjab-Sindh tensions--can all be traced to the loss of Islam as a common vocabulary of public morality. More profoundly, in a move that reached into every home, the state had attempted to dictate a specific ideal image of women in Islamic society, an ideal that was largely antithetical to that existing in popular sentiment and in everyday life.

A major component in the Islamization program, the Shariat Bill, was passed in May 1991. This bill required that all laws in the country conform with Islam. Women's groups in particular were concerned that the reforms in the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961 could be jeopardized by the new bill.

A controversial law, Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, drew a great deal of attention from critics associated with the Human Rights Commission in 1993-1994. Introduced in 1986 by Zia, the law, referred to as "the blasphemy trap," states that "whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Prophet Muhammad shall be punished with death or imprisoned for life and shall be liable to fine." The law extends to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.. According to Amnesty International, several dozen people had been charged under Pakistan's blasphemy laws by early 1994. In all cases, these charges appear to have been arbitrarily brought and to have been based on an individual's minority religious beliefs or on malicious accusations. The government of Benazir Bhutto, sensitive to Pakistan's image in the world community, attempted to approve changes in the blasphemy law in order to "curb abuses of the law"--especially those involving false accusations and fabricated cases. Critics claim, however, that Benazir, constantly under attack for being too liberal by the religious right, had been overly cautious and slow to introduce amendments to the law.

See also

• Islam by country
• Islam in India, Islam in the United Kingdom

References

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External links

• Links: South Asian Islam