Humeira Iqtidar

State management of religion in Pakistan and dilemmas of citizenship

This paper looks at the paradoxical creation of a Muslim minority by the Pakistani state to cast a light on the processes of secularism, citizenship and minoritization. The paper argues that contrary to the concerns articulated in academic debates about citizenship and minorities, it is in fact the majority that is managed most assiduously. Critically, these debates assume readymade groupings; this paper discusses how the creation of both a minority and a majority is an ongoing, fractured process. The creation of a minority group, the Ahmadiyya, from within the putative Muslim majority by the state in Pakistan, is thus a useful prism through which to understand the ways in which a specific kind of citizen has been created in Pakistan, one who is increasingly impatient with the idea of doctrinal difference even as she is confronted by a proliferation of different Islams in everyday life.

Conspiracy Theory as Political Imaginary: Blackwater in Pakistan

How may one theorise conspiracy theories? The last decade has seen a mushrooming of academic interest in conspiracy theories, perhaps in response to the increased role of conspiratorial thinking in politics in the same period. Using a case study of a private security firm, Blackwater, in Pakistan, this article suggests that while most conspiracy theories may be too linear and hyper-logical to allow for historical contingency and the messy reality of political struggles, it is possible to conceive of some of them as a kind of political imaginary that places national politics within a transnational context in an age where a surfeit of information is matched only by a paucity of relevant information. While the academic literature over the last decade has tended to take the form of conspiracy theories as an important clue to their function in contemporary politics, this article argues for taking the content of conspiracy theories seriously as well. At the same time, it suggests the value of delineating more sharply the concept of ‘political imagination’.

Secularism Beyond the State: the ‘State’ and the ‘Market’ in Islamist Imagination *

This paper will build on my ethnographic engagement with the Jamaat-e-Islami to explore aspects of a shift in Islamist practice and imagination from the ‘state’ as the inspiration for projects and movements to the ‘market’. In doing so I hope to investigate not just what this might tell us about Islamism in Pakistan, but also about the ability of the state to manage religion more generally. My aim is three-fold: first, to record the particular modalities of changes within Islamism in Pakistan; second, to show that these shifts betray a closer alignment between the global political imagination and Islamism than has previously been acknowledged; and third, in discussing these issues, to explore the implications of the idea of market as an important contender to the dominance of the idea of the state in political mobilizations. While recent discussions about secularism, following Talal Asad, 1 have tended to focus on the disciplinary force exerted by the state, this paper suggests that the market has emerged as a potentially more significant, though under-recognized, disciplinary force.

Redefining ‘tradition’ in political thought:

Debates about preserving, modifying and applying sharia (Islamic normative guidelines) through principles of taqlid (to follow) or ijtihad (to carry out independent interpretation) are immensely useful in thinking through a sharper definition of tradition for political theorists and historians of political thought more generally. Political theorists and historians of political thought have tended to use tradition in a range of ways without specifying key elements of the concept. Building on debates in Islamic thought related to taqlid and its relationship to ijtihad, and through a focus on the ideas of a contemporary thinker, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, this paper proposes that tradition in political thought can be defined as a framework for knowledge production and consumption constituted of two key elements: method and sensibility. Further, the paper suggests that this definition allows us a better understanding of vibrancy in a tradition: vehement debate, contradictions and internal contestation are not signs of decay but of vitality within a tradition. It is the severe delinking of the two elements of a tradition, method and sensibility, which has greater potential to reduce its vibrancy.

Introduction: secularism and citizenship beyond the North Atlantic world

The papers in this collection go beyond the European and North Atlantic context to engage with the implications of secularism for citizenship. The relationship between citizenship and secularism, too often assumed to be uncomplicated in the European context, has been opened up in the wake of increasing religious diversity in Europe itself, following debates focused on race (Gilroy 1987, Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, Brubaker 1992) and multiculturalism (Taylor 1994, Kymlicka 1995, Benhabib 2004). A catalyst in recent years has been the increasingly vocal and visible Muslim presence in Europe, which has insisted on its differences in the same breath as claiming rights of citizenship. The combined pressures of immigration, socio-economic grievance and demands for recognition and for religious exemptions and prerogatives similar to those long accorded to Christians and more recently to Jews have led to an apparent increased attention to religion by governments even at the time when the population as a whole is ever less observant. The relationship between citizenship and immigration has received much academic attention (Turner 1993, Soysal 1994, Cesarani and Fulbrook 1996, Benhabib 2004, Cesari 2004, Habermas 2009). Citizenship has been understood as being closely linked to territory and the nation state – Marshall’s by now classic definition assumes a clearly defined territorial context. Even though there has been some attempt at thinking about citizenship in a transnational context (Archibugi and Held 1995, Sassen 1996), the focus has remained principally on the North Atlantic context, that is Western Europe and North America. This present collection of papers is therefore an initial step in the more detailed and also more broad-based study of the relationship between secularism and citizenship and does so by moving beyond the North Atlantic focus. The analysis of state management of religion and citizenship in other, more plural, contexts allows some important counterpoints and lessons for North Atlantic states. Of course, this does not mean that we wish to promote or privilege any particular type of secularism: Indian secularism is not ‘better’ than the British version – the Indonesian state’s practices of managing religious practice are not shown to be superior to the French method. The emphasis, rather, is on providing the contextual detail necessary to understand the particular ways in which state management of religion coincides with specific ideas and practices of citizenship and varying conceptions of religion itself. Thus, in these papers, religion is comprehended not in abstract terms as a feature of a culture or a population, but instead is understood by exploring it institutionally through its association with particular nodes of power.

Secularism and the State in Pakistan * : Introduction

Pakistan occupies an uncertain and paradoxical space in debates about secularism. On the one hand, the academic consensus (if there is any), traces a problematic history of secularism in Pakistan to its founding Muslim nationalist ideology, which purportedly predisposed the country towards the contemporary dominance of religion in social and political discourse. For some, the reconciliation of secularism with religious nationalism has been a doomed project; a country founded on religious nationalism could, in this view, offer no future other than its present of Talibans, Drone attacks and Islamist threats. But on the other hand, Pakistan has also been repeatedly held out as a critical site for the redemptive power of secularism in the Muslim world. The idea that religious nationalism and secularism could combine to provide a path for the creation of a specifically Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent is often traced to the rhetoric of Pakistans founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But debate among Muslim League leaders specifically on the relationship of religious nationalism with secularism—and indeed on the nature of the Pakistani state itself—was limited in the years before partition in 1947. Nevertheless, using aspects of Jinnahs rhetoric and holding out the promise of secularisms redemptive power, a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, was able to secure international legitimacy and support for almost a decade.

How Long Is Life? Neoliberalism and Islamic Piety

“My brother thinks counting his sins . . . turning his back on politics is what Islam is all about. . . . It is certainly an easier route to salvation!”Abdul Basit said slightly sarcastically as his older brother, Abdul Baqir, sat with his head bowed and a slight smile on his face. Both Abdul Baqir and Abdul Basit were united in their conviction that leading an Islamic life was important. But for them to agree on an interpretation of the good Muslim life, however, was not as easy. The two had chosen different paths: one brother was a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and vociferous about the importance of state-oriented political struggle as an integral part of religious life. The other had joined the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), a pietist, almost vehemently apolitical group, after an initial brief link with the JI. The clamor of arguments about Islamism and its potential conflict with liberalism, modernity, and democracy have drowned out other conversations. This essay is an attempt at tuning in to a more muted but no less transformative harmony between one particular strand of Islamic thought and practice—mass Islamic pietism—and neoliberalism by focusing on the ideational constellations supported by the pietist, mass proselytizing group, Tablighi Jamaat, which is the largest organized grouping of Muslims in the world today. To evaluate the exact numbers of those affiliated with the group is hard given