Islam in Pakistan
From Mw
Over 98% of 166 million peoples of Pakistan are Muslims and Islam is the State religion of Pakistan. The majority of Muslims in Pakistan are Sunnis and there is also a high proportion of Shias.
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[edit] Islam in Pakistani Society
Islam arrived in the area now known as Pakistan in 711 CE, when the Umayyad dynasty sent an Muslim Arab army led by Muhammad bin Qasim against the ruler of Sindh, Raja Dahir, whose pirates attacked Arab ships. The army conquered the northwestern part of ancient Pakistan from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea. The arrival of the Arab Muslims to the provinces of Sindh and Punjab, along with subsequent Muslim dynasties, set the stage for the religious boundaries of South Asia that would lead to the development of the modern state of Pakistan as well as forming the foundation for Islamic rule which quickly spread across much of South Asia. Following the rule of various Islamic empires, including the Ghaznavid Empire, the Ghorid kingdom, and the Delhi Sultanate, the region was controlled by the Mughals from 1526 until 1739. The Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and Sufis flocked from the rest of the Muslim world to Islamic Sultanate in South Asia. The Muslim Sufi missionaries played a pivotal role in converting the millions of native people to Islam. As in other areas where it was introduced by Sufis, Islam to some extent syncretized with pre-Islamic influences, resulting in a religion with many traditions distinct from those of 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).
The Muslim poet-philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal first proposed the idea of a Muslim state in the South Asia 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 two distinct nations in the South Asia 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 Ahmadiyya (a small sect whose beliefs are regarded as heretical by Sunni and Shia religious leaders), issuance of identity cards denoting religious affiliation, and government intervention in the personal practice of Islam.
[edit] Politicized Islam
From the outset, politics and religion have been intertwined both conceptually and practically in Islam. Because Muhammad 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.
In 1977, the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto outlawed alcohol and changed the weekend 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 Shias, ethnic disturbances in Karachi between Pakhtuns and Muhajir, increased animosity toward minority Ahmadies, 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, it is alleged that 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.
[edit] Muslim sects in Pakistan
The Muslims are divided into different sects which are called Madhab i.e, schools of jurisprudence (also 'Maktab-e-Fikr' (School of Thought) in Urdu). Nearly 80% of Pakistani Muslims are Sunni Muslims and 20% are Shi'a Muslims. The nearly all Pakistani Sunni Muslims belong to Hanafi school with a small group of Ahle Hadith. The Hanafi school is divided into Barelvis and Deobandis schools. While majority of Pakistani Shia Muslims belong to Ithna 'ashariyah school with significant minority of Nizari Khoja Ismailis (Aga Khanis) and a small Mustaali Dawoodi Bohra schools. By one estimate, in Pakistan, Muslims are divided into following schools: the Barelvis 38%, Deobandis 55%, Ithna Ashari 5%, Ahle Hadith 1%, Ismailis 1%, Bohras 0.25%, and other smaller sects. The Ahle-e-Hadith are part of Hanbali school. Nearly 65% of the total seminaries (Madrassah) are run by Deobandis, 25 per cent by the Barelvis, six percent by the Ahle Hadith and three percent by various Shia organizations. Zikris are considered to be a heretical sect by Muslims.
[edit] Recent Trends
Recent years have seen a steady increase in Islamic consciousness across the Muslim World. In Pakistan, this phenomenon has manifested itself in a number of ways, from the growing prevalence of hijab among young women and extreme reations to atrocities against Muslims in the world.
Since General Mushraf appointed himself President - The Different Muslim Parties formed an Islamic Coalition the MMA. They are the official opposition in Pakistan.
