Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (38 page)

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  1. Ibid.

49 Ibid., 8–13.

50 Ibid., 36.

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 37. 53 Ibid., 42.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid., 42–3.

56 Ibid., 43.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid., 42–4.

59 Ibid., 43.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., 43–6.

62 Ibid., 43–8.

  1. Sayyid Abul A(la Mawdudi, al-Jihad fi al-Islam (Delhi: Markazi Maktabah-yi Islami, 1988), 9–10, as quoted in David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 100.
    1. Mawdudi, al-Jihad fi al-Islam, 50–1, as quoted in Cook, Understanding Jihad, 100.
    2. Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, s.v. “Jama(at-i Islami” (by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr).
    3. Ibid.
    4. Ibid.
    5. Ibid.
    6. Yoginder Sikand, “The Emergence and Development of the Jama(at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir (1940s–1990),” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 3 (2002): 731–51.
    7. Kalim Bahadur, The Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan: Political Thought and Political Action (New Delhi: Chetana Publications, 1977), 193.
    8. Kalim Bahadur, Democracy in Pakistan: Crises and Conflicts (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1998), 15.
    9. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama(at-i Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 123–6.
    10. The Constitution of Pakistan, Annex [Article 2(A)], The Objectives Resolu- tion,
      www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/annex_objres.html
      (accessed September 29, 2008).
    11. Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 123–6.
    12. Ibid.
    13. Bahadur, The Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan, 56.
    14. Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, 42–4.
    15. Sayyid Abul A(la Mawdudi and Khurram Murad, The Islamic Movement: Dynamics of Values, Power, and Change (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1984), 24–52.
    16. Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, 117.
      1. Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 143.
      2. Ibid.

 

  1. Mumtaz Ahmad, “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat,” in The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 1, Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 472–5.
  2. Asad Gilani, Maududi: Thought and Movement (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1984), 135.
  3. The text of Ayub Khan’s speech is located at UK High Commission, Karachi, disp. #INT. 48/47/1, 5/25/1959, DO35/8962, PRO, as cited in Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 251n111.
  4. Ahmad, “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia,” 472–5.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Bahadur, The Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan, 106.
  7. Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, 45.
  8. Bhuian Md. Monoar Kabir, Politics and Development of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 2006), 14, 69, 226.
  9. Partha S. Ghosh, Cooperation and Conflict in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1989), 23–4.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 99.
  12. Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 170–2.
  13. John L. Esposito and John Obert Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 109.
  14. Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 188.
  15. Faiz Ali Chisti, Betrayals of Another Kind: Islam, Democracy, and the Army in Pakistan (Cincinnati, OH: Asia Publishing House, 1990), 66–9.
  16. Shahid Javed Burki, “Pakistan under Zia, 1977–1988,” Asian Survey 28, no. 10 (October 1988): 1088–92.
  17. Marvin G. Weinbaum, “War and Peace in Afghanistan: The Pakistani Role,”

Middle East Journal 45, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 71–85.

  1. Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 195.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Rafiuddin Ahmed, “Redefining Muslim Identity in South Asia: The Transformation of the Jama(at-i-Islami,” in The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 4, Accounting for Fundamentalisms, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 686–9.
  4. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, s.v.“Jama(at-i Islami” (by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr).
  5. Jamaate-e-Islami Pakistan,
    www.jamaat.org/new/english
    (accessed June 1, 2009).
  6. Valerie J. Hoffman, “Muslim Fundamentalists: Psychosocial Profiles,” in The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 5, Fundamentalisms Comprehended, ed. Martin

E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 204–6.

  1. Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 185–9, 197–8, 229; Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 3–102.

 

  1. Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 1–79, 163–294; Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, 3–102; Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, 49–106; Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, 185–9, 197–8, 229.
  2. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “The Muslim Brotherhood After Mubarak: What the Muslim Brotherhood Is and How it Will Shape the Future,” Foreign Affairs, February 3, 2011,
    www.foreignaffairs.com/print/67205?page=show
    (accessed March 2, 2011); Colin Flint, Introduction to Geopolitics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 206–7.
  3. Shireen J. Jejeebhoy and Zeba A. Sathar, “Women’s Autonomy in India and Pakistan: The Influence of Religion and Region,” Population and Development Review 27, no. 4 (December 2001): 687–712; Yvette Claire Rosser,“Contesting Historiographies in South Asia: The Islamization of Pakistani Social Studies Textbooks,” in Religious Fundamentalism in the Contemporary World: Critical Social and Political Issues, ed. Santosh C. Saha (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 265–91.
  4. Steven Barraclough, “Pakistani Television Politics in the 1990s: Responses to the Satellite Television Invasion,” in Television: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, ed. Toby Miller (London: Routledge, 2003), 344–52.
  5. Najum Mushtaq, “Islam and Pakistan,” Foreign Policy in Focus, December 21, 2007.
  6. David Herbert, Religion and Civil Society: Rethinking Public Religion in the Contemporary World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 271; “A Special Report on Egypt; Saving Faith: Islam Seems to Be Fading as a Revolutionary Force,” The Economist, July 17–23, 2010, 15.
  7. Herbert, Religion and Civil Society, 272; Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “Islamic Mobilization and Political Change: The Islamist Trend in Egypt’s Professional Associations,” in Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report, ed. Joel Beinin and Joe Stork (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 120–35.
  8. Melika Zeghal, Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics, trans. George Holoch (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2008), xx–xxiii; Gokhan Bacik, Hybrid Sovereignty in the Arab Middle East: The Cases of Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 151–3; Bernhard Platzdasch, Islamism in Indonesia: Politics in the Emerging Democracy (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), 6–20.
  9. Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 16. See also Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 22–78.

6

Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

While Pakistan and Afghanistan have a long and complicated history and Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan goes as far back as Pakistan’s independence in 1947, Pakistan’s policies toward and within Afghanistan during and after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 are significant in a consideration of Islamism in general and in analyzing the mujahideen, the Taliban, and Afghanistan in particular. Indeed, the coopera- tion between Pakistan, the United States, the mujahideen, and several majority-Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, gave rise to the Taliban and al-Qaida, which were two of the offshoots of the mujahideen, and began establishing themselves in the early 1990s. In this history, the very group which Pakistan, the United States, and several majority-Muslim countries supported – the mujahideen – gave rise to two of the groups, the Taliban and al-Qaida, which became ardent opponents of the United States and virtually all of the regimes in the majority-Muslim world. Thus, the creation of the Taliban, al-Qaida, and their affiliate organizations constitutes one of several classic cases of “blowback,” that is, the process by which an ally that a nation or nations support eventually turns against the nation or nations that supported them.

 

 

Zia ul-Haq and Pakistan’s Involvement in Afghanistan

 

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, President Zia ul-Haq attempted to seek political advantage for himself and for Pakistan on five fronts at once – eventually leading to the creation of the mujahideen, and

 

 

Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics, First Edition. Jon Armajani.

© 2012 Jon Armajani. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 

subsequently the Taliban and al-Qaida, which would become forceful opponents of subsequent Pakistani regimes. Zia’s five fronts were: (1) certain Middle Eastern and North African countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Yemen; (2) the Soviet Union;

(3) the United States; (4) China; and (5) Afghanistan.1

First, Zia called upon the leaders of various majority-Muslim countries to aid the mujahideen in their war against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, because of what Zia believed was the anti-Islamic nature of the Soviet Union and the potential of its increasing influence in the region. Over time, the governments of several majority-Muslim countries provided financial and other forms of support to the mujahideen. One reason that the leaders of these countries believed it was to their advantage to support the mujahideen was because their governments were aligned economically and politically with the United States. Consistent with that, these leaders believed that Soviet expansion into Afghanistan and its possible future expansion into Iran and other Middle Eastern countries could lead to Soviet domination, which would threaten these Middle Eastern countries’ sovereignty and their profits from oil sales to Western and other industrialized countries. At the same time, it must be noted that the Soviet Union provided military and/or economic aid to some of the same majority-Muslim countries that opposed its expansion in the region.2 Thus, the governments of some of those countries were willing to accept aid from the Soviets while allowing Islamist militants to go to Afghanistan in order to fight against the Soviet Union there.

The second factor that may have played into the decision of some Middle Eastern and North African leaders to support the mujahideen was that this support put them in a position to grant permission to the Islamists within their own Middle Eastern countries to go to Afghanistan to fight alongside of the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets. The Islamists to whom these Middle Eastern and North African leaders granted permission to go to Afghanistan, in addition to opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, opposed the regimes within their home countries. By granting these Islamists permission to go to Afghanistan, the Middle Eastern and North African leaders believed they were ridding themselves – at least temporarily – of several influential Islamist leaders and rank-and-file activists, who threatened their regimes.3

The second of the five fronts that Zia attempted to buttress during the Soviet war in Afghanistan was with the Soviet Union itself. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had been a significant economic and political ally of Pakistan and while Zia supported the mujahideen, he made sustained efforts to maintain Pakistan’s alliance with the Soviet Union partly so that Pakistan could continue to enjoy the political and economic benefits of this relationship and also because Zia hoped that Pakistan could, in the future,

 

mediate a settlement in the Soviet war in Afghanistan in such a way that would favor Pakistan. Zia believed that maintaining a strong relationship with the Soviet Union was an important means for possibly achieving these objectives. In his support of two opposing sides in the Afghan war, Zia was intentionally trying to ally his government with two different sides of the war at the same time, with the goal of increasing Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and the region more broadly.4

The third front that was important to Zia was Pakistan’s relationship with the United States. While Zia asked the United States government for military aid that would assist the mujahideen, his requests contained demands for finances and arms that far exceeded the needs or capabilities of the mujahideen. While the American President Jimmy Carter refused these seemingly excessive requests from Zia, after Ronald Reagan became President in 1980, he supported most of Zia’s requests, approving, for example, the sale of 16 American F-16As, which was a fleet of fighter bombers that Pakistan could use against its rival India.5

Zia’s fourth front was Pakistan’s relationship with China. A Sino-Pakistani cooperation treaty signed in 1986 carried stipulations regarding China providing Pakistan with knowledge and materials for a civilian nuclear power program, while at the same time, in a more veiled way, this agreement constituted a continuation of Bhutto’s nuclear weapons policy. Partly because of Pakistan’s role as a buffer against the Soviet Union and its support of the mujahideen, President Reagan and the United States Congress intentionally turned a blind eye to the fact that Pakistan was using its treaty and its broader relationship with China as a way of building its nuclear weapons program. By the time Soviet soldiers withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, Pakistan possessed a nuclear weapon. Possibly fearing an overly pow- erful Pakistan – albeit the same country that had been helpful to the United States during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan – the United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan in 1990 that were very similar to the ones the United States had lifted in 1979. While these new sanctions blocked the sale of the last few F-16As, they had no impact on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, which was – from the Pakistani government’s view – a success.6

Pakistan’s fifth front was Afghanistan itself. Zia used Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which was a military and intelligence arm of the Pakistani government whose members actively supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan, as one means for gathering intelligence about the war in Afghanistan and as a vessel for providing, training, support, finances, and arms to the mujahideen. Zia had at least four reasons for supporting the mujahideen as extensively as he did: (1) in Zia’s view, Pakistan’s active presence in Afghanistan could have had the effect of increasing Pakistan’s regional influence; (2) Zia was hoping that Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan would enable Pakistan to have an influence on Afghanistan’s

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