9. Accommodation and Opposition, 1977–1988

Opposition to Bhutto had not only made the party popular and presented it with its first opportunity to further its political standing in Pakistan but it had also coalesced Islam and democracy into one political platform. The alliance between Islam and democracy quickly became antagonism between the two, however, when Zia came to power.

The Zia Regime

The military coup, dubbed Operation Fair Play, that toppled Bhutto in July 1977 caught the country’s political parties off guard and threw them into a state of confusion. In one fell swoop the coup had removed the opposition’s raison d’être. The government had been removed too quickly and by the armed forces rather than by the PNA, leaving the opposition with no immediate plan of action.

This confusion was compounded by the Islamic veneer of the new regime. For the first time in its history it appeared that Islamic parties would operate in a hospitable political environment and enjoy a certain amount of government patronage. Their ideological rapport produced what one party source called “a mother-daughter relationship” with Zia’s regime.^[1] The general had hoped to restore state authority by controlling the Islamic parties by including them in his regime. What he offered was similar to what elsewhere has been termed inclusionary corporatism.^[2] He had incorporated the demands of the Islamic parties into state ideology, thereby offering the Islamic parties a power-sharing arrangement in which the state would act as the senior partner, but the Islamic forces would gain from state patronage and enjoy a modicum of political activity. This strategy had short-run success because it appealed to the ideological sensibilities of the Islamic parties, but in the long run it failed as it ran counter to their fundamental political interests. The general’s mixture of Islam and autocracy generated corresponding tensions between the Jama‘at’s commitment to Islamization and its avowed democratic objectives.

The Jama‘at and its allies in the PNA were not pleased with Zia’s coup. For one thing the general had canceled the elections, though he emphasized the fact that Bhutto had never intended to abide by his agreement to hold elections and had himself planned to unleash the army against the opposition.^[3] Therefore, had the army not acted with alacrity, according to the general, Pakistan would have been immersed in a blood bath and the alliance parties would have been thoroughly routed. Having removed the obdurate People’s Party government, Zia would now pave the way for the realization of the PNA’s demands for a democratic order. Zia also made full use of his reputation as an observant Muslim to gain the sympathy of the Islamic parties and quickly adopted the Nizam-i Mustafa, thereby adding to the PNA’s confusion over what political strategy to adopt. Zia also had a humble demeanor which, in contrast to the arrogant Bhutto, went a long way to impress the PNA leaders and also allay their fears.^[4]

The Jama‘at was by no means immune to Zia’s manipulations. It had performed rather well in the elections of 1977, better than most of its allies in the PNA. If the campaign which followed the disputed elections of 1977 was any indication, the political fortunes of the party both within the PNA and nationally had subsequently soared even higher. The alliance had expected to inherit the government from the People’s Party, and the Jama‘at had anticipated ruling the coalition government that was to succeed Bhutto. Encouraged by the Islamic facade of Zia’s regime, the party therefore tried to salvage its fortunes by lobbying with Zia for early elections. Elections and Islamization thereby became the bait which Zia used to co-opt the Jama‘at. Between 1977 and 1979 the Jama‘at was increasingly drawn into his regime. Zia announced the first of a series of promised election dates for October 1, 1977. He referred to the house arrest of the anti-Bhutto politicians as “an enforced rest…[to] rejuvenate themselves for the coming General Elections.”^[5] He promised the Jama‘at that after the elections a civilian government would be allowed to take over.^[6] Eager to maintain stability, the Jama‘at went to great lengths to promote cooperation between Zia and the PNA, eventually acting as the broker between the two. Zia’s avowed commitment to the Jama‘at’s ideological position and the fact that he and Mian Tufayl both belonged to the Ara‘in clan (biradri) and were from Jullundar in East Punjab helped strengthen the entente.

Mawdudi enthusiastically endorsed Zia’s initiatives in implementing the Nizam-i Mustafa movement, hailing his efforts as the “renewal of the covenant” between the government and Islam.^[7] As a result, the harmony between the Jama‘at’s ideological position and its political aims was lost. By appealing to the ideological sensibilities of the Jama‘at, Zia was able to turn the party’s attention from its political interests. Between 1977 and 1979, Zia adroitly manipulated the fate of Bhutto and his party—to whom government propaganda had given apocalyptic significance—to postpone the elections while still keeping the Islamic parties in check. He thought that once Bhutto was executed the anti-Bhutto alliance would fall apart, giving more breathing room to his regime.^[8] He argued that elections were in the interests of neither the alliance nor of the country, if they were to serve as the means for resuscitating the People’s Party. Bhutto, he added, could be prevented from returning only if he was made accountable for the abuses which were committed while he was in office.

The prospect of Bhutto’s return was disconcerting to the opposition especially after it had been convinced that the gallows had awaited them all in July 1977 had Zia not intervened.^[9] When Bhutto, temporarily released from prison, was received in Lahore on August 8, 1977, by a large and cheering crowd, the Jama‘at quickly fell in line with the government and raised the banner of “retribution first, elections next!”^[10] The enthusiasm shown for Bhutto by Lahoris made the impending elections seem less promising than they had seemed earlier.^[11] There was no point in pushing for elections unless the Jama‘at and the PNA would win them. With the memory of the anti-Bhutto agitations of the summer of 1977 waning, the Jama‘at and its allies now looked to the government and the judicial system to thwart any attempt at a comeback by the People’s Party by trying Bhutto for abuse of power. With the Jama‘at’s and the PNA’s support, Bhutto was implicated in an assassination attempt on one of his opponents; the intended victim survived but his father died, and Bhutto was charged with murder.

The quest for justice soon shifted to thinly disguised vindictiveness. Once the courts had convicted Bhutto on the charge of murder, the Jama‘at’s demand for his execution was loud. “Mr. Bhutto has not been punished as a political convict. The Court has sentenced him for involvement in a murder case. Being a moral criminal and murderer, any demand for commutation of his sentence would be tantamount to interference in judicial verdicts,” was how Mawdudi rationalized their stand.^[12] So central was the Jama‘at’s support for Bhutto’s execution that Zia deemed it politic to meet with Mian Tufayl for an hour and a half the night before the former prime minister’s hanging.^[13] The Jama‘at also provided Zia with support in suppressing the remaining pockets of People’s Party resistance. Mawdudi argued that if the People’s Party were allowed to run in the elections the debacle of East Pakistan would be repeated in Baluchistan or Sind;^[14] this provided Zia with a convenient pretext for institutionalizing the martial-law regime and repeatedly postponing elections.

The Jama‘at’s effort to bring the elections about became the focus of the party’s relations with the government. Zia now argued that elections could not be held by a martial-law regime—a civilian government was required to oversee an orderly electoral process and, if necessary, the transfer of power. After months of negotiations between the PNA and the Zia regime, on August 21, 1978, an agreement was reached whereby the PNA would form a government which would oversee the national elections. The two sides agreed that the PNA would appoint two-thirds of the cabinet ministers and the general one-third. The Jama‘at joined the new government as part of both the PNA’s quota and General Zia’s team. As part of the PNA’s quota of ministers the Jama‘at received the portfolios of production and industry; petroleum, minerals, water, and power; and information and broadcasting.^[15] Khurshid Ahmad was appointed to be minister of planning as part of Zia’s quota of ministers. After thirty years of political activity in Pakistan, for the first time in its history the Jama‘at had become part of the ruling establishment.^[16]

The PNA’s arrangement with Zia, however, did not last for long. On April 21, 1979, to prepare for national elections, the PNA dissolved the government. Zia appealed to the Jama‘at to stay in the cabinet, but the party, hoping to control the postelection civilian government, turned down the general’s offer and decided to stay with the PNA.^[17] To create some distance with the martial-law regime in preparation for elections, the Jama‘at also began to criticize Zia, especially his economic policy. Soon after Khurshid Ahmad left the cabinet, he criticized the government’s proposed budget as un-Islamic and as harmful to the interests of Pakistan as Bhutto’s policies.^[18] The maneuver paid off. On October 7, Zia reached an agreement with the PNA, which committed the regime to elections on November 17, 1979.^[19]

They took Zia at his word. Mawdudi declared that elections would soon bring the Jama‘at to power and that no additional extraconstitutional activities were therefore needed to hasten the advent of the Islamic state.^[20] The party’s enthusiasm for an electoral victory soared even more when the Jama‘at participated in municipal elections in September 1979^[21] and won 57 of the 160 seats contested in the elections to the Karachi municipal corporation (city council).^[22] The 35 percent margin of victory was sufficient to assure the Jama‘at’s domination over the corporation and, by implication, the politics of the Muhajir community, at least for the time being. The elections had been boycotted by some PNA parties and had been held on a nonparty basis. The Jama‘at nonetheless saw any election better than none and, viewing the vote as a positive sign, formed the Ukhuwwat (Brotherhood) group, a surrogate for the Jama‘at in the election campaign. The Jama‘at’s tally of seats in the corporation was sufficient to secure the mayoralty of Karachi for the party; the office was held by ‘Abdu’ssattar Afghani until 1986.^[23]

The results from elsewhere in Sind were not as promising. Of the province’s thirteen district councils, eleven were won by pro–People’s Party candidates, two by those close to the Muslim League and one by the Jama‘at.^[24] In Punjab the Jama‘at did not do well either. In the Punjab district council elections, of the 500 seats contested, pro–People’s Party candidates received 212, independents 135, and the Jama‘at 35 seats. The Jama‘at may have come in a distant third, but it did better than the Muslim League with 28, the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam with 13, and the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Pakistan with 6 seats each. In corporation and municipal elections in Punjab, pro–People’s Party candidates got 527, independents 390, and the Jama‘at’s candidates 93 seats. Overall, in Punjab the Jama‘at got one district council vice-chairman, five municipal committee chairmen, six municipal committee vice-chairmen, five town committee chairmen, and four town committee vice-chairmen.

In North-West Frontier Province of the 360 district council seats, the Jama‘at got 32, but came in second behind pro–People’s Party candidates, who won 52 seats. The Jama‘at again defeated the Muslim League and the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam. The Jama‘at did better in the elections than the other participating PNA parties and was defeated only by the cluster of pro–People’s Party candidates. Zia, however, would not have allowed Bhutto’s party to run in the national elections, which led the Jama‘at’s leaders to believe that they would sweep the polls in November 1979. This, however, also meant that the Jama‘at would render more support to Zia just to make sure that the People’s Party would be kept out of the elections. The Jama‘at became even more sanguine about its electoral prospects when, after Mawdudi died in September 1979, his funeral procession in Lahore later that month, less than a month before the promised November 17 national elections, drew a large crowd.

The municipal councils were the first openly elected bodies to be put in place since the advent of martial law, which, given the Jama‘at’s full participation in them, intensified the party’s rivalry with the Zia regime for the control of Pakistan. Zia found the Jama‘at’s good showing useful in that for the time being the party could be relied upon to control Karachi and contain the pockets of pro-People’s Party sentiments in Pakistan’s largest city, which was critical to the stability of the military regime. The Jama‘at’s ability to manipulate a nonparty election, however, did not go unnoticed by Zia.

The Ruling Islamic Alliance

Although throughout the 1977–1979 period the Jama‘at’s activities were directed toward national elections and capitalizing on its popularity during the anti-Bhutto agitations, Zia’s use of Islamization to silence the party continued to dampen its resolve. Zia’s manipulation of the Jama‘at’s ideological platform had a certain appeal for the party’s leaders and rank-and-file members.^[25]

The rapport between the Jama‘at and the martial-law regime had been established by Mawdudi two years before he died. By 1977 he was at odds with the more pragmatic leadership that had succeeded him. He no longer had any official standing, but he nonetheless publicly endorsed the Islamization initiatives of Zia. In March and April 1978 in talks on Radio Pakistan, he hailed Zia’s efforts as welcome first steps in applying Islamic principles to Pakistan’s judicial and political system.^[26] While Mawdudi’s objective was to claim that this greater visibility of Islam in the political process was all his party’s doing, he ipso facto made Islam a major issue in the alliance between the new regime and the PNA—a prerogative which the Jama‘at had denied Bhutto in 1977—at a time when the two sides were locked in debate over the formation of the PNA government.

The Jama‘at’s leaders, taking their cue from Mawdudi, wholeheartedly assisted Zia in preparing a comprehensive Islamization program. It was introduced to the public on February 10, 1979, with the promulgation of Islamic edicts concerning taxation and hudud punishments (punishments for practices proscribed in religious texts). The Jama‘at claimed the new measures to be the fruits of its decades-long struggle to introduce Islamic law to Pakistan. Islamization, however, proved to be a problem: while it created concord between the Jama‘at and the Zia regime in principle, in practice it promoted conflict between the two over what the content of the Islamization program should be.

The Jama‘at had endorsed Zia’s Islamization measures, assuming it would then dominate the process. Zia, having received the party’s blessings, decided that it was not politic to restrict its patronage to one Islamic party and began cultivating stronger ties with the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Islam and the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Pakistan, the ulama and Sufi leaders (mashayakh), and a host of other Islamic organizations, a policy which the Jama‘at ridiculed as religiously suspect and politically motivated. As one Jama‘at leader put it, “We were interested in the siratu’l-nabi [path of the Prophet], while Zia was content with the miladu’l-nabi [the popular celebration of the birthday of the Prophet, a custom of Sunni folk religion in Pakistan].”^[27] The Jama‘at surmised from Zia’s “divide and rule” that he was not sincere about Islamization and would not be easily manipulated by the Jama‘at.

Zia’s motives in diversifying the religious basis of his regime were not entirely Machiavellian. The general had been an admirer of Mawdudi and the Jama‘at for a long time, and he had looked to the Jama‘at as an intellectual force which could serve the same function in his regime as the left had done in the People’s Party. The fact that the Jama‘at had been the main ideological adversary of the left since the 1960s and had always claimed to have a blueprint for the Islamization of the state led Zia to draw parallels between the Jama‘at and Pakistan’s leftist intelligentsia. That is why the Jama‘at leaders were given cabinet portfolios and invited to serve on such prominent state-sponsored bodies as the Council of Islamic Ideology. A number of pro-Jama‘at thinkers, writers, and journalists were also inducted into the inner circle of Zia’s advisers, to help him lay the foundations for the Islamic state.

Zia’s expectations, however, came to naught. The Jama‘at proved unable to deliver on the claims it had made. Aside from abstract notions about the shape and working of the ideal Islamic state, the party had little to offer in the way of suggestions for managing its machinery. Its notions about the working of Islamic dicta in economic and political operations provided Zia with no coherent plan of action. Just as the Jama‘at became disappointed with the politics of Zia’s regime, so the general became disillusioned with the practical relevance of the Jama‘at’s ideas.

After the execution of Bhutto on October 17, Zia suspended the November 1979 elections. The Jama‘at had taken his promise of elections seriously and had mobilized its resources in anticipation of them. It also sensed that after two years the memory of the excesses of the Bhutto government had begun to fade, and the paramount political issue before the country would now be martial law, opposition to which had by 1979 become the rallying point for the prodemocracy forces to which the Jama‘at claimed to belong. The solid showing of pro–People’s Party candidates in the national municipal elections was sufficient proof that opposition was mounting. The tightening of martial law following the cancellation of the November elections was only likely to damage Zia’s political standing further. The Jama‘at saw its popularity dwindle in tandem with the waning hopes for elections. The party’s association with the ruling order, which had been designed to bring about elections and secure a political victory for the party, was rapidly becoming a liability.

Zia’s postponement of the November elections led Mian Tufayl, the general’s most ardent supporter among the Jama‘at’s leaders, to warn Zia about the consequences of his policy.^[28] In October 1980 the Jama‘at issued a statement critical of martial law and encouraging Zia to restore civilian order and the rule of law, end censorship, and hold elections.^[29] This was the first sign of an open breach, but it brought no reaction from the general. The Jama‘at’s shura’ sessions reassessed the party’s policy and issued strong denunciations of martial law, tampering with the constitution, and strong-arm tactics in dealing with the opposition.^[30] The pace and breadth of the attacks against the government increased between 1980 and 1985 as it became apparent that the martial-law regime had in good measure dissipated Islam’s political appeal and diminished the ability of religion to legitimate political action and authority. Zia’s triumph had proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for Islam.

The Jama‘at to its own detriment did not distance itself from the martial-law regime swiftly enough to put an end to its political hemorrhaging. Mian Tufayl, who was close to Zia and particularly bitter toward the Bhutto regime, dampened the party’s zeal for resuming agitational politics by pointing out that the last time the Jama‘at had opted for such a course, in Ayub Khan’s time, the ultimate beneficiary was not the Jama‘at but the left.^[31] As evil as martial law might turn out to be, he argued, the People’s Party remained Pakistan’s greatest scourge. Under Mian Tufayl’s leadership, the Jama‘at was reduced to inaction, though it was compensated for its political losses with gains of another kind. The party’s status was bolstered by the regime. It dealt with Mawdudi as a senior statesman and a religious sage. He was invited to give talks on Radio Pakistan, his advice was solicited by Zia, and his words began to adorn the front page of national newspapers. This new prestige opened government to the Jama‘at’s influence to an unprecedented extent. The Jama‘at now began to infiltrate into the armed forces, the bureaucracy, and important national research and educational institutions.

Nowhere are the nature and extent of recompense for cooperation with the Zia regime clearer than in the Jama‘at’s role in the Afghan war. The Jama‘at had been privy to the government’s Afghan policy since 1977, when, following Nur Muhammad Taraki’s coup in Afghanistan, generals Zia and Fazl-i Haq had met with Mawdudi, Mian Tufayl and Qazi Husain Ahmad to explore a role for the Jama‘at in Pakistan’s Afghan policy.^[32] The party had played a major role in marshaling Pakistani public opinion in favor of an Islamic crusade against the Soviet Union. Soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Zia brought the Jama‘at into his Afghan policy, using its religious stature to legitimate his depiction of the war as a jihad. This arrangement was mutually beneficial, especially to the Jama‘at. The Afghan war encouraged close ties between the Jama‘at and the Pakistani army and security forces, opened the inner sanctum of government to the party, involved it in the flow of funds and arms to the Mujahidin, and provided Jama‘at and IJT members with valuable military training.

Contact with the Afghan Mujahidin and refugees opened them to the Jama‘at’s political and religious influence. The party’s intellectual sway over segments of the Afghan refugee community, in turn, boosted its image in Islamic revivalist circles across the Muslim world and gave it a pan-Islamic image.^[33] The jihad had served Zia as a useful means of harnessing the Jama‘at’s energies and diverting them away from domestic politics and was no doubt instrumental in the Jama‘at’s decision to retain its close ties to the Zia regime despite the opposition of many of its members. The Jama‘at construed these gains as beneficial because they increased the party’s power, but they were no substitute for winning elections. It eventually became clear that the party had exhausted the utility of these compensations and would have to reevaluate its role.

By 1984, after seven years of “Islamic autocracy,” the Jama‘at began to distance itself from the regime; the IJT forced the party’s hand. A formidable political force in its own right, it too had supported Zia until he banned student activity. Then relations deteriorated. This allowed the multiparty coalition, the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD), organized by the People’s Party in 1981, to make overtures to the IJT, beginning in March 1984.^[34] Mian Tufayl intervened with IJT leaders,^[35] but rather than responding to the demands of its student wing, he tried to get them under his control, which was what the martial-law regime wanted. In defiance the students continued to agitate.

Mian Tufayl then appealed to Zia to defuse the situation by lifting the ban on student activities, using the Jama‘at’s endorsement of the referendum Zia was pushing to legitimate his policies in the name of Islam as his reward for lifting the ban and promising that the future National Assembly would be sovereign.^[36] Zia accepted both conditions, only to renege on the first after the referendum was conducted and the second when he dismissed the Muslim League government and dissolved the assemblies in May 1988. These breaches of faith greatly undermined Mian Tufayl’s position. He had promised to deliver on the IJT’s demands through his personal ties with the regime; now members decided that nothing further could be gained from cooperation with Zia.

The Elections of 1985

After the referendum the Jama‘at’s political fortunes plummeted, and the national elections, when they were finally held in 1985, proved that the popularity of the 1977–1979 period had vanished. Debate over the Jama‘at’s relations to Zia and the possibility of cooperation with the MRD only prolonged the party’s inability to act. In the elections of 1985 the Jama‘at won 10 of the 68 seats it contested for the National Assembly (compared with 9 out of 31 in 1977, and 4 out of 151 in 1970),^[37] and 13 of the total of 102 contested for various provincial assemblies (compared with 4 out of 331 in 1970) (see tables 14–15). These results showed Zia that the Jama‘at had lost its power, and he turned to the Muslim League and an array of ethnic parties for support. The elections, as all Pakistanis knew, had been boycotted by the left and centrist parties and were an easy prey for the Islamic and right-of-center parties. Consequently, the Jama‘at did better in these elections than it had in its previous electoral showings. It won three of Dir’s five provincial assembly seats, and for the first time won a seat in the Baluchistan provincial assembly. But these modest gains paled before those of the other right-of-center parties, especially in Punjab and Sind. The political damage caused by associating with Zia was reflected in the fact that Jama‘at candidates who were PNA ministers were not elected.

The gradual dissipation of the PNA’s base of political support; the relative success of the MRD after 1981; the ban on labor unions, political parties, and, finally, student unions; and the results of the elections of 1985 had all acted to create doubts in the minds of many Jama‘at members regarding the wisdom of their close ties to Zia. If the public’s apathy over the referendum of 1984 was any indication, after seven years of martial rule Islamization had lost much of its appeal. To the extent to which Islamization measures still held sway over the masses, it was Zia and not the Jama‘at who benefited. Ghafur Ahmad, the head of the Jama‘at’s parliamentary contingent in the 1970s and the secretary-general of the PNA, was the first in the Jama‘at to show his opposition to Mian Tufayl’s alliance with Zia by not running in the elections of 1985 at all. Dissent soon spread to the Jama‘at’s rank and file.

Mian Tufayl continued to argue that Zia’s Islamization scheme was in accordance with the Jama‘at’s agenda and at odds with the spirit of the MRD, which the amir had dubbed the “movement for the restoration of the People’s Party.”^[38] He pointed to the dangers that the Soviet presence in Afghanistan and the activities of the pro–People’s Party clandestine organization, Al-Zulfiqar, posed to the interests of Pakistan. This argument collapsed when, soon after the elections, civilian rule returned to Pakistan, not under the aegis of the Jama‘at, but in the form of a Muslim League government.

A contingent began to form in the Jama‘at which sought to restore pragmatic politics to its rightful place in the party. The anti-Zia faction was centered in Karachi and led by Ghafur Ahmad. The Karachi Group, as they were called, argued that if the Jama‘at was to survive it would have to cultivate support, and that meant moving away from the purely ideological concerns which Mian Tufayl was using to keep the Jama‘at in Zia’s camp. The party had to find a recipe for success, one which was rooted less in ideology and more in pragmatic considerations. The Jama‘at, argued the Karachi Group, had no choice but to adopt a populist platform demanding democracy and socioeconomic justice.^[39] They recognized the limits to Islam’s appeal in the face of socioeconomic, ethnic, and democratic demands. Islam could no longer undergird a successful political campaign. Religious politics had begun to ebb.

The size of the religious vote had increased in Zia’s time, but so had the number of parties which depended on it. While the Islamic vote was divided many-fold, the MRD, and later the Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz, were left to monopolize the relatively neglected secular constituency. The political fortunes of the Jama‘at, argued the Karachi Group, could be salvaged only if the party broke completely with the Zia regime, joined the MRD, and established contact with the People’s Party, the undisputed party of populism. The Jama‘at had always thrived on dissent, and therefore such a strategy had a certain appeal for a party which had for most of its existence been in the opposition. For some, democracy was as much a basis of the Jama‘at’s message as Islamization, and neither could satisfactorily exist without the other.^[40]

The new approach provided a way of shifting ground without openly denouncing the ideological basis of the Jama‘at. It began now to preach that martial law was a worse evil than socialism, modernism, or the People’s Party.^[41] The abrupt shift was not entirely convincing and opened the Jama‘at to the charge of inconsistency, but the reorientation was real.

Karachi was particularly receptive to these new ideas. The city has the largest concentration of Jama‘at members. In 1990 there were 1,100 members and 7,000 workers in Karachi.^[42] They are ideologically the least rigid, the most clearly driven by the desire for success, and therefore the most willing to experiment with a pragmatic approach to politics, with which they have had considerable practice since they controlled the municipal government at the time. As opposition to Zia gained momentum, the Jama‘at’s leaders became more receptive to the views of the party’s Karachi members, especially as they were echoed by IJT students and workers across Pakistan. As a result, Mian Tufayl finally agreed to split with Zia and demand the restoration of the 1973 constitution—which the Jama‘at now accepted in the interests of denying Zia the opportunity to bog down the political process in lengthy constitutional debates—and the holding of party-based elections.^[43]

The Karachi Group demanded more radical action. Contacts between the Jama‘at and the MRD had gone on since 1981, when one of the alliance’s founders, Sardar ‘Abdu’l-Qayyum, had invited the party to join its ranks and had been rebuffed by Mian Tufayl.^[44] Three more meetings had taken place; they had had no tangible results, in large measure because of Mian Tufayl’s intransigence.^[45]

The debate grew more intense when, after the elections, Zia turned over the government to the Muslim League, to replace the Jama‘at as the main pillar of his regime. The Jama‘at became an opposition party and was once again locked in rivalry with the League.

The Muslim League government was secular and wary of criticism from the religious quarter; it was also aware of the mischief that the Jama‘at and the IJT were capable of. The Jama‘at, the League believed, was Zia’s last line of defense against any challenges to his authority—the “B-team of the martial law” as the Pir Pagaro, the president of the Muslim League at the time, put it. The League hoped eventually to inherit power from Zia and to that end embarked upon a policy that involved putting civilian rule into place and asserting its autonomy from Zia. This was a bold strategy, which Zia would not take lightly, but before launching any campaign against Zia, the Muslim League had to neutralize the Jama‘at. It began by putting up its own student union, the Muslim Student Federation, against the IJT and undermining Jama‘at’s power base in Karachi, a city crucial to any successful antigovernment campaign.^[46] In February 1987 the Sind ministry dissolved the Karachi municipal corporation, arresting Afghani and 101 other Jama‘at councilmen, and called for new municipal elections, which brought the MQM into power in that city. The MQM won the mayoralty of Karachi in January 1988.^[47] But most damaging were the League’s propaganda attacks on the party. The Jama‘at was identified with the martial-law regime and as Zia’s most important ally just when it had decided to abandon both. The Pir Pagaro’s “B-team” showed the isolation that proximity to the Zia regime could produce and that the Karachi Group had warned against.

The Loss of Muhajir Support

The Muslim League’s anti-Jama‘at campaign was compounded by a more devastating development—the loss of the Karachi, Hyderabad, and the Muhajir vote to the MQM. The MQM had been founded by former members and affiliates of the IJT, and it initially drew support from the Jama‘at’s constituency among the Muhajirs. The Jama‘at’s leaders believed its meteoric rise to power could not have occurred without the approval of the armed forces,^[48] and realized that Zia had engineered it to destroy their base in Sind.

Since the beginning of his rule, Zia had remained wary of rural Sind, where Bhutto still enjoyed a considerable following and which had shown little enthusiasm for Zia’s coup. He had sought to placate Sindhi landlords and ethnic parties by catering to their interests, which were often at odds with the demands of the Muhajirs. For instance, the controversial quota system in Sind put in place by Bhutto, which reserved prized bureaucratic positions for Sindhis to the detriment of the Muhajirs, was kept intact by Zia. Nor did the general do anything about the worsening social conditions in Karachi, which by 1986 had reduced many Muhajir neighborhoods to squalor. The Zia regime encouraged the rise in power of the Punjabi and Pathan communities of Karachi, in the form of the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad (Punjabi-Pathan Alliance) party, which the Muhajirs also resented. Zia had turned a blind eye to the Pathans’ trade in contraband and narcotics, brought to Karachi from Afghanistan for export.^[49] The Muhajirs’ frustrations erupted in the form of the anti-Pathan riots of 1986, which culminated in a protracted conflict between the MQM and the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad, waged in Karachi well into 1990. Between 1979 and 1986, Zia had relied on Islamization and anti–People’s Party propaganda to keep the Muhajir community in check and had deputized the Jama‘at—with the help of the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad in Punjabi and Pathan areas—to maintain order in Karachi. Not surprisingly, the Muhajirs grew resentful of the “Islamic” regime and its allies. The rise of Muhajir ethnic consciousness ended the Jama‘at’s control of Karachi politics and for the first time brought to light the grievances of the Muhajirs against the Zia regime.

Zia concluded that he needed a new political order in Karachi and other cities in Sind to supplant the Jama‘at and harness the political energies of the Muhajirs to his benefit. The organization of the MRD in 1981 had generated concern among Pakistan’s military leaders. While Sindhi landowners and the ethnic parties could be relied upon to keep the MRD out of rural Sind, the situation in Karachi was more complex. Wali Khan, the Pathan leader of the Awami National Party and a MRD stalwart who was opposed to the Afghan war and the Zia regime, was popular among Karachi’s sizable Pathan community. The inroads he made had led the People’s Party, which could also benefit from the restlessness of the Muhajir community, to action. When the 1985 elections proved that the Jama‘at no longer had the political power to keep the MRD out of Karachi and had developed doubts of its own about the Zia regime, the general decided that the Karachi-based MQM was a better choice for his support. Jama‘at leaders in fact claim that the army and the Sind ministry not only encouraged the MQM but also armed it.^[50] Although it too had been organized by people with grievances against the Zia regime, it was still more hostile to the People’s Party and preoccupied as well with defeating its rivals—the Jama‘at, the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad, and the MRD. The Muhajir-Pathan clashes in 1986 greatly benefited Zia as they pitted the Pathan supporters of Wali Khan and the MRD against the Muhajirs. What Zia did not realize was that the advent of the MQM gave the Jama‘at and the People’s Party a common cause. As the IJT was squeezed out of the campuses in Sind and the Jama‘at lost its base of support in Karachi, both found a natural ally in the People’s Party, which was also trying to make inroads into the MQM’s territory.^[51]

The Reorientation of the Jama‘at

Mian Tufayl decided not to seek another term as amir of the Jama‘at-i Islami, and in October 1987 the party elected Qazi Husain in his stead. Qazi Husain was a populist who appealed to the pro-Zia faction, although he belonged to the Karachi Group. He had maintained close contacts with the Zia regime as the Jama‘at’s liaison with the army in the Afghan war, but more important, he had advocated joining the MRD as early as 1983. His election therefore indicated that the majority of Jama‘at members favored populism, democracy, and the break with Zia.

Following his election mandate, Qazi Husain lost no time in attacking feudalism and capitalism, demanding rights for the impoverished many, and pointing to the obligations of the wealthy few. The party’s activities were extended into the rural areas and among the urban underclass.^[52] Qazi Husain’s populist agenda kept pace with the demands of the Karachi Group, which was greatly encouraged by the words and actions of their new leader, and it also provided a basis on which to approach the People’s Party.

Qazi Husain was openly against Zia, arguing that neither Islamization nor the Afghan war justified the abrogation of democracy in Pakistan.^[53] He asserted that Zia’s Islamization measures paid lip service to Islam but Islamized none of the country’s judicial, bureaucratic, or political structures. Pakistan’s political predicament could be solved only by ending martial rule, not by promulgating the shari‘at bill,^[54] which had taken effect on June 15, 1988, replacing most of the existing legal code with injunctions from the shari‘ah. Zia’s persistence in using Islam to justify martial rule had hurt the cause of Islam in Pakistan.^[55] The Jama‘at therefore had refused even to participate in the discussions on either the shari‘at bill before it was passed, or the eighth amendment to the constitution, which would vest greater powers in the president. On June 16, 1988, a day after the bill took effect, the Jama‘at’s secretariat issued a statement in Lahore signed by nine of the Jama‘at’s senior leaders, which criticized the bill for paying superficial lip service to Islam and deplored Zia’s use of Islam for political ends.^[56] Although the final draft of the shari‘at bill was similar to Jama‘at’s own earlier proposals and the party had originally favored it, it rejected the bill outright on the grounds that it did not address popular concerns and was meaningless so long as the anglicized legal system remained the same.^[57] Nor was criticism of the shari‘at bill limited to Qazi Husain and the leaders of the Karachi Group; it was also voiced by many Jama‘at leaders in Punjab, including Mian Tufayl.

Qazi Husain then attacked the military regime at its foundations. Fear of Soviet encroachment in South Asia and the jihad that was mounted to counter it had been critical to Zia’s survival. Aware of all this, Qazi Husain claimed that Pakistan’s Afghan policy had originally been conceived by Bhutto.^[58] He also claimed that the Jama‘at was open to cooperation with all political forces and particularly wished to end its “cold war” with the People’s Party.^[59] He had himself laid the foundations for discussions with the People’s Party in two meetings with the MRD emissary, Faruq Laghari. During those meetings the MRD had invited the Jama‘at to join its ranks, and Qazi Husain had favored accepting that invitation. Despite pressures exerted by the Karachi Group, whose views were aired through the editorials of the Jama‘at daily Jasarat, Mian Tufayl had barred the party from contemplating such a move. After 1987, with Mian Tufayl out of the way and the greater possibility of elections in 1988, the Karachi Group and the new amir made another bid for joining the MRD. The new initiative was prompted by the dismissal of Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo and the dissolution of the assemblies on May 29, 1988, which the Karachi Group interpreted as the recrudescence of martial rule.

The People’s Party was eager to secure the Jama‘at’s support. Elections were expected, and it was deemed important for the MRD to represent as wide a spectrum of parties as possible. Moreover, the Jama‘at had been the People’s Party’s staunchest opponent throughout the 1970s and was closely associated with Zia. Winning over the Jama‘at, therefore, had symbolic significance for the MRD. The People’s Party was also aware of the Jama‘at’s street power and wished to neutralize the party’s potential opposition to the MRD’s own campaign and possibly to solicit the Jama‘at’s help in mounting a more effective one.^[60]

In June 1988, Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the MRD, met with Ghafur Ahmad of the Jama‘at in Karachi. This meeting resulted in an understanding between the MRD and the Jama‘at and was followed by a second more formal meeting. The purpose of this second meeting was to agree that the next elections would be party-based, held within ninety days, and governed by the People’s Party–PNA agreement of July 1977,^[61] which incorporated a plan to conduct elections without the Registrations Law and provided for an autonomous election commission to oversee them. The three-point agreement was to serve as the basis for a common electoral platform which would induct the Jama‘at into the MRD. Some say that the negotiations also involved a discussion of the distribution of candidates, with the Jama‘at asking for 30 percent of the MRD’s slate.

The Benazir-Ghafur meetings were followed by two meetings between Qazi Husain and Laghari in Lahore, the second of which occurred in September 1988. Meanwhile, Ghafur Ahmad asked the shura’ for a ruling which would convert the agreements reached by him into political directives. The shura’, whose members were mainly from Punjab and North-West Frontier Province, was not eager to cooperate with the MRD, especially since it was led by a woman. Nor had they been as antagonistic toward Zia. Despite the intercession of the amir, the members deadlocked. The Jama‘at put forth a new condition for continuing association with the MRD: its political platform had to include a demand for the “creation of an Islamic order.”

Senior Jama‘at leaders led by Mian Tufayl now began to lobby against joining the MRD, assisted by a host of right-of-center writers, statesmen, and intellectuals, none of whom were Jama‘at members and many of whom were affiliates of the Muslim League, who though they had always denounced the Jama‘at’s ideological convictions, suddenly began to complain that it had forsaken them. An array of publications began to pressure the Jama‘at to revert to its ideological fervor and forego the agreement with the MRD. Although they were foes of the People’s Party, Zia was not altogether uninvolved in encouraging this sudden concern for the Jama‘at’s ideological fidelity. Leading those criticizing the Jama‘at was the pro-Jama‘at journalist and close adviser to Zia, Muhammad Salahu’ddin, through whom Zia managed to encourage a split in the party.^[62] Salahu’ddin, an opponent of the People’s Party, was particularly vociferous in his criticism of Ghafur Ahmad and the Jama‘at’s new policy. Possibly prompted by Zia, he reminded the party’s leaders of the excesses of the Bhutto government, of the People’s Party’s secular approach to politics, and of the suffering the Jama‘at and the IJT had endured under that party’s rule.^[63] Citing Mawdudi’s often-quoted statement that the “Jama‘at-i Islami is not only a political party, but also an ideological one,”^[64] Salahu’ddin also told Jama‘at leaders that their political instincts were drowning out their religious sensibilities and that the party was turning its back on its ideological heritage. An alliance with the MRD, warned Salahu’ddin, would turn the Jama‘at into a party with no principles and no ideological mainstay; it would be the end of the Jama‘at.

Takbir, Salahu’ddin’s magazine, has always been popular and influential with Jama‘at members and supporters across Pakistan as the party’s semiofficial but independent organ and a forum for the Jama‘at and other right-of-center groups. It is an important part of the Jama‘at’s propaganda machine and, until the People’s Party alliance, had never been openly at odds with the party’s leaders. Salahu’ddin’s editorials were therefore particularly effective in casting doubts among rank-and-file members regarding the propriety of the Jama‘at’s new strategy, and they undermined its leaders both in Karachi, which was initially in favor of Ghafur Ahmad’s position, and in Punjab, where Zia enjoyed a good following among Jama‘at members. Takbir’s campaign was particularly influential because the shura’ had postponed any decision on what action to take until a poll of the rank-and-file members had been tallied. In Karachi, pro–Ghafur Jama‘at workers responded to Salahu’ddin’s criticism by demonstrating outside the offices of Takbir, where they burned copies of the magazine. In Lahore the party’s publications bureau reprimanded Salahu’ddin, to show the Jama‘at’s annoyance at his interference with party authority.

Although the Lahore Group agreed with Salahu’ddin, it was compelled to close ranks with the Karachi Group lest the Jama‘at’s internal disputes become public. The Jama‘at’s secretariat defended Ghafur Ahmad, arguing that he had met Benazir Bhutto as an emissary of the amir and as part of the Jama‘at’s routine contacts with the leaders of various political parties. The Jama‘at was, however, clearly on the defensive, not only because the general public had been alerted to its rapprochement with the erstwhile enemy but also because Salahu’ddin had cast the new changes in an unsavory light. The implications of the charge of inconsistency and the propaganda war that surrounded it were serious, especially in North-West Frontier Province and Punjab, where followers of the Jama‘at are from small towns and rural areas and are more ideologically oriented. Radical change, especially in light of Takbir’s successful propaganda campaign, was no longer possible. The turn of events, moreover, had proved to the Jama‘at that it could not switch gears too radically without jeopardizing its traditional base of support. It had to chart its course more judiciously.

The attempts of the Jama‘at, and the Karachi Group in particular, to provide a more balanced mix of ideology and pragmatism and to replace commitment to Islamization with greater populism had been effectively checked. While some continued to press for joining the MRD, the Lahore Group resisted it. The Jama‘at began to renege on its agreements with the MRD. Discipline within the Jama‘at had grown lax, opening up the internal debates of the party to public scrutiny. Qazi Husain sought to restore party unity by denouncing Zia for undermining the People’s Party–PNA talks, for his excessive reliance on the United States, for promoting corruption in Pakistan, for creating ethnic dissension in Sind, and for sowing discord among Pakistani political parties.^[65]Jasarat elaborated further on these themes and, taking its cue from Qazi Husain, stepped up its anti-Zia rhetoric throughout the summer of 1988. Zia was criticized for killing demonstrators in Karachi in 1986, for his anti-Shi‘ism, and for his sleight of hand in using the shari‘at bill to oust Junejo from office. He had used the excuse that Junejo had been reluctant to promulgate a shari‘at bill to dismiss the government, and then proceeded to promulgate a shari‘at bill of his own to obfuscate his constitutionally suspect ouster of the prime minister. “Nothing good came of the rule of the anglicized army officer, whose Islamic convictions were skin deep,” Qazi Husain remarked.^[66]

This escalation of attacks against Zia went hand in hand with distancing the Jama‘at from the MRD. After three tumultuous meetings, the Jama‘at’s shura’ finally rejected the MRD option.^[67] Faced with this decision, the party reaffirmed its ideological priorities and established limits to how much it could compromise on issues of principle. It would adopt a more cautious approach to pragmatic politics. Discord, however, continued to reign in the party.

Zia died in a plane crash on August 17, 1988, and this event abruptly altered the political scene. The subsequent democratization of Pakistani politics opened new vistas to the party and posed new questions to its leaders. Martial rule ceased to exist, but its departure only highlighted the fundamental problems of the Jama‘at’s religiopolitical agenda. Once Pakistani politics found new life in the post-Zia period, the same considerations that had compelled the party’s move to populism reappeared. Political expedience forced the party to search once more for an acceptable and politically meaningful equilibrium between commitment to Islamization and pursuit of political interests, which would at the same time retain the support of the religiously conscious electorate and permit the party to expand its base.

Notes