pakistan’s

mullahs for fatwas. In fact this pattern of economic-cum-religious exchange—what some would
describe as a new space of economic and religious resistance to established elites—is precisely what
has unfolded in places like Jhang and Chakwal.
A similar pattern emerged in Swat—albeit, this time, without the same sectarianism. During
the 1970s, for instance, Charles Lindholm describes a pattern in which the marginalized tenants
of Swat who supported land seizures inspired by the rhetoric of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)
became disgruntled ater the removal of PPP Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto by General
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. 13 Lindholm notes that by 1981 many of Swat’s disaffected tenants had
joined up with renegade Sunni mullahs like Maulana Sufi Mohammad to press their social-justice
demands within Sufi’s informal (i.e., nonstate) references to sharia. 14
In most parts of Pakistan, it is common for both the jirga and the courts to be captured by
powerful landowners. 15 In the jirga, informal settlements are expected to reinforce the agnatic
terms of tribal custom—customs that stress the terms of patriarchy and patrilineage while, at the
same time, varying from place to place. But the terms of custom have been treated as increasingly
anathema, since 1947, in Pakistan’s state-based courts. Still, my own research shows how Pakistan’s
state-based courts remain closely tied to the pursuit of custom-friendly outcomes. 16 In fact when
less powerful litigants approach the courts, they are oten bankrupted by procedural maneuvers
and stratagems that, in a de facto sense, reinforce the specific terms of tribal custom. Elected
elites oten facilitate these stratagems en route to the production of extrajudicial razeenamas, or
compromises, favoring landowning elites outside of the courts themselves.
With this in mind, it is hardly surprising that, among the rising lower-middle classes,
freelancing mullahs operating at some distance from the traditional rural order are occasionally
seen as an attractive dispute-resolution alternative. Indeed, most appeals for speedy justice at the
hands of local mullahs—including appeals by those who lack any pious motivation—could be
described as a form of class-based resistance. This pattern of social resistance is critical of both
the jirga and its formal appendage, the courts. Indeed, Pakistan’s Islamic state is widely seen as
“un-Islamic” precisely insofar as its core institutions have been captured by elites firmly committed
to the preservation of rural tribal norms.
Rival Classes: The Case of Baluchistan
Baluchistan is particularly interesting when it comes to these evolving social trends. For several
decades, prevailing forms of resistance to a formal state known for supporting the jirga system
favored by tribal elites (i.e., Baluch sardars) have not been associated with any form of religious
resistance. Instead, prevailing forms of resistance have been associated with secular forms of
regional or nationalist dissent. 17
In Baluchistan regional politics have long involved at least four levels of tension. The first,
unfolding within the Baluch community, pits traditional tribal sardars against a group of
13 Lindholm, “Contemporary Politics in a Tribal Society,” 485–505.
14 See Lindholm, “Contemporary Politics in a Tribal Society”; and Aasim S. Akhtar, “Islam as Ideology of Tradition and Change: The ‘New
Jihad’ in Swat, Northern Pakistan,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 30, no. 3 (2010): 595–609.
15 See Muhammad A. Chaudhary, Justice in Practice: Legal Ethnography of a Pakistani Punjabi Village (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
16 Nelson, In the Shadow of Shari’ah.
17 In Balochistan, patterns of dissent have focused on secular demands for provincial-cum-ethnic autonomy not unlike—indeed, historically
tied to—the secular demands of Bengal’s Awami League. See Paul Titus and Nina Swidler, “Knights, Not Pawns: Ethno-Nationalism and
Regional Dynamics in Post-Colonial Balochistan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 1 (2000): 47–69.
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