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JPS 16.2 290
public tribute to religious discourse within national politics. To a lesser extent,
the same has been true of the democratic administrations of Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf too, when in need of political support, turned to the
mullahs.
Shaikh effectively argues that this recurring tendency to rely on religion to
destabilise political opposition has strengthened the Islamists‟ political voice.
The continual engagement in Islamic discourse politically empowers the
religious establishment for, if being a good Muslim is a pre-requisite to being a
good Pakistani citizen or a legitimate leader, then those institutions claiming the
divine right to interpret who is a good Muslim or what is an appropriately
Islamic state are accordingly granted considerable political power.
The book‟s key shortcoming is its continual marginalization of socioeconomic
interests in explaining Pakistani politics. It thereby effectively
attributes a greater causal role to the contested interpretation of Islamic identity
than it rightly deserves. For example, Shaikh attributes the first large-scale
religious riots in Pakistan, in Punjab in 1953 over whether the Ahmedis were
legitimate Pakistani citizens, to the „chronic ambiguity and confusion over the
meaning of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims‟ (p. 60). But to see these riots as
being driven by a conflicted vision of Pakistani citizenship is to severely
underplay the role of political interests in motivating these riots. Key religious
organizations in colonial India had long been concerned with denouncing
Ahmedis. However, these denunciations only became politically explosive in
1953, at the precise time when the national administration in Pakistan was
considering a constitution that was perceived as generally unfavourable to
Punjabi interests. Indeed, a powerful Punjabi landlord himself wrote that the
anti-Ahmedi riots were instigated by the Chief Minister of Punjab in order to
undermine this constitution (Firoz Khan Noon, From Memory, [Islamabad,
National Book Foundation, 1993] p.234). To therefore understand these riots as
being predominantly driven by questions of citizenship is to confuse immediate
justifications with underlying causes.
Shaikh‟s contention that contradictory visions of political Islam
predominantly explain Pakistan‟s lack of commitment to public welfare and
social equity is another case in point. Though Shaikh acknowledges that it was
the nature of class interests in those areas which became Pakistan which initially
drove the lack of commitment to a developmental agenda, she ultimately argues
that it was „the absence of a consensus regarding the role of Islam that has, above
all, severely constrained the economic and social reach of the state‟ (p. 146,
emphasis added). But the interests of wealthy, politically powerful social groups
in preventing redistributive policies play a more important role in blocking the
state‟s developmental agenda. To be sure, ambiguity over the public role of
Islam has complicated the state‟s ability to pursue a developmental agenda. Yet
the interests of Pakistan‟s ruling families, particularly of its powerful feudal and
industrial families, in preventing a genuinely redistributive agenda that could
challenge their grip on power is surely a bigger obstacle to a redistributive