Winning without Elections: The Islamist Campaign for the Islamic State in Pakistan

Abstract

Between 1947 and 1977 the religious parties of Pakistan never commanded significant electoral strength, yet each successive constitutional settlement moved closer to their demands: the Objectives Resolution of 1949, the Islamic Republic of 1956, the restoration of the state’s Islamic name in 1963, the concessions of 1973, the Second Amendment of 1974, and the capitulations of Bhutto’s final months in 1977. This article explains the paradox through the public arena. What the religious right lacked at the ballot box it possessed in the street, the mosque, and the party press, and the state repeatedly purchased calm in the arena with text in the constitution. Drawing on the party publications of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the record of the ulema’s campaigns from the twenty-two points of 1951 to the Nizam-e-Mustafa movement of 1977, the Munir Report, and the constitutional documents, the article reconstructs the recurring cycle of demand, mobilization, and concession, and takes equal note of its limits: three decades of campaigning obtained names, oaths, and gatekeeping offices, but never the clerical veto over legislation that the campaign was launched to secure. The Islamic state as written was a settlement extracted in the arena, not a surrender.

Keywords: Islamism; Jamaat-e-Islami; ulema; Objectives Resolution; anti-Ahmadiyya movement; Muslim Family Laws Ordinance; constitution of Pakistan; public arenas