State is a social construct, not a product of nature. It was born of necessity to protect human life, property, and liberty according to an agreed-upon set of laws, rules, traditions, and customs, enforced by an authority to which people extended their allegiance.
State ideology is a modern phenomenon that emerged with the rise of nation-states that replaced theocratic and dynastic states. The pre-modern world had three main state structures: Europe was Christendom, the Islamic world had the Caliphate, and Chinese kings had the Mandate of Heaven. All three struggled to maintain a delicate balance between the ruler’s assertion of power and control, the conferment of heavenly authority, and religious teachings.
Sovereignty of the state is another new addition to modern political thought. In the age of empires, the state was not sovereign like today’s nation-state, with a centralised power structure and monopoly on the means of violence and coercion through a standing army, police, and means of communication.
Sovereignty in the pre-modern state was neither articulated theoretically, nor delineated in legal terms, nor exercised uncontested. Their sovereignty was dispersed among various contestants within the empire who claimed their share of power and autonomy through religious authority, regional autonomy, and by maintaining a shared monopoly over the means of violence and coercion.
Pakistan emerged as a modern nation-state under modernist leadership trained in Western political thought and the Common Law. Almost all the Muslim religious entities were opposed to the idea of Pakistan and were deeply suspicious of modern leaders like Jinnah. Yet, when it came to the framing of the Constitution to run a modern state, all the religious forces joined hands and demanded an “Islamic State”. This too was a novel concept in Muslim political thought; never before had an empire or a state claimed to have a religion. Muslim empires and states were known almost all the time by the name of the ruling dynasty, Umayyads, Abbasids, Ottomans, Mughals, etc.
The new concepts of nation, sovereignty, electoral democracy, and a written constitution had no precedence in pre-modern political philosophy or statecraft. Once they embraced Pakistan, having opposed it first, the religious leadership Islamised them all; sovereignty belongs to Allah, exercised as a trust by the elected representatives of the nation-state. The compromise was later packaged as the ideology of Pakistan.
Ideology Takes Shape
Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Mr Liaqat Ali Khan, in his address to the joint session of the US Congress in May 1950, highlighted the Islamic principles and moral foundations of the Pakistani state. Earlier, in 1949, he had piloted the “Objectives Resolution” that set out the basic principles of Islamic democracy on which the Constituent Assembly would frame the future constitution. The 1956 Constitution declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic. The 1973 Constitution went a step further in declaring Pakistan an Islamic Republic and Islam as the State Religion.
Islam, in their view, was a unifying force and a means of nation-building, not a theocratic code of governance. They argued that Pakistan was to be Islamic in spirit and principle, but secular in institutional structure
Pakistan’s first military ruler, Ayub Khan, undertook the first serious efforts to make the Islamic orientation of the state into a formal “Islamic Ideology”. Muslim scholars like Dr Javed Iqbal, Dr Ishtiaq Qureshi, Dr Fazlur Rahman, and Dr Khalifa Abdul Hakeem advanced a modernist version of Islamic national identity.
They emphasised the Islamic identity of the state but strongly argued to keep clear of theocratic rule. Islam, in their view, was a unifying force and a means of nation-building, not a theocratic code of governance. They argued that Pakistan was to be Islamic in spirit and principle, but secular in institutional structure. That means no religious class overseeing state affairs, no clerical veto in lawmaking, and no religious office to test the religiosity of its citizens.
Javid Iqbal says, “Islam does not recognise the distinction between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘profane’… it is incumbent on every Muslim to constantly endeavour to realise the spiritual values while performing his temporal obligations. Hence, ‘Secularism’ is an integral part of Islam, and it is for this reason that the Islamic State assimilates the qualities of an ideal ‘Secular State’.” (Ideology of Pakistan, 1959) In this sense, secularism means non-theocratic and not ‘non-religious’. Pakistan is an Islamic state, but secular as it separates political authority from clerical authority.
The decade of the 1960s saw the creation of the ‘Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology’ and the ‘Central Institute of Islamic Research’. They endeavoured to provide an Islamic ideological basis for the state and interpreted Islam as a living, progressive force. These scholars tried to elaborate what Allama Iqbal called “the immobility of Islam during the last 500 years…” and applied “the principle of movement in the structure of Islam. This is known as Ijtihad.”
The conservative orthodox ulama criticised modernist interpretation as Westernisation of Islam, an abomination to ‘real Islam’. The fall of the Ayub regime in 1969 and the political upheaval that followed discredited modernist Islam and created space for conservative Islamic ideology. The decade of the 1970s saw the beginning of the rise of conservative regressive forces and the retreat of modernist progressive Islam. The making of the 1973 Constitution was the first battleground.
The Constitution retained the Objectives Resolution and added that “Islam shall be the State religion of Pakistan”. It also added that all existing laws shall be brought into conformity with the injunctions of Islam, and no law shall be enacted which is repugnant to such injunctions. The Council of Islamic Ideology was also created.
Bhutto was secular in outlook and a self-styled socialist, but with the separation of East Pakistan, he found it necessary to reorient Pakistan’s foreign policy from Cold War security pacts towards the ‘Islamic bloc’. He convened the 2nd Summit of the Islamic Conference, sent fighter jets to defend Syria in the 1973 war, and established closer relations with oil-rich Arab countries. In 1974, in response to a religiously instigated street agitation, he amended the Constitution, declaring the Ahmadi sect as non-Muslim. In 1977, faced with another street agitation, he prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol.
Zia turned Islamic ideology from an aspirational goal and policy guideline into an institutionalised and constitutionalised enforceable legal provision
Islamisation by Decree (1977–1988)
The military staged its third coup in July 1977 and removed the elected and politically beleaguered government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Zia-ul-Haq, the new military ruler, was religiously inclined. The joint opposition that had launched months-long agitation against Bhutto’s alleged election rigging aroused religious passions to strengthen its popular appeal. Zia found it politically expedient to launch the most serious Islamisation drive. As Chief Martial Law Administrator, he could introduce new laws and amend existing ones.
The ideology of Pakistan was cast in a traditional-conservative religious idiom. Any reference to the modernist, secular view of the ideology was banished from school textbooks, media, and political discourse. Zia became the champion of ‘real Islam’ of the orthodox conservatives. He empowered the same obscurantists against whom Allama Iqbal had written extensively and held them responsible for smothering the ‘dynamic view’ and the ‘creative spirit’ of the Quran for five hundred years.
Zia’s Islamisation assiduously ignored what Iqbal had reasoned—that “the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in variety and change… But eternal principles, when they are understood to exclude all possibilities of change, which, according to the Qur’an, is one of the greatest ‘signs’ of God, tend to immobilise what is essentially mobile in its nature.”
The Objectives Resolution was part of the preamble in the 1956, 1962, and 1973 Constitutions. Zia made it ‘a substantive part’ of the Constitution and thus legally binding and judicially enforceable. He issued a flurry of executive orders: Hudood Ordinance (1979) Islamic criminal laws (covering theft, adultery, alcohol, etc.); Zakat and Ushr Ordinance (1980) Islamic system of taxation in addition to the existing one; established Federal Shariat Court (1980)to review if any law was ‘repugnant to the injunctions of Islam’; introduced Islamic banking; under education reforms, he drastically revised school textbooks to Islamise history and social studies in line with his fundamentalist view of Islam; made Islamic Studies compulsory in schools; amended laws to criminalise Ahmadiyya religious practices and public display of their Muslim identity; amendments to the blasphemy laws practically did away with investigation and evidence to prosecute the accused. Mere accusation of blasphemy is enough to get the accused arrested or killed in mob violence.
State Patronage and Militarisation of Ideology
Zia turned Islamic ideology from an aspirational goal and policy guideline into an institutionalised and constitutionalised enforceable legal provision. Islam became a tool to seek legitimacy for authoritarian rule and a justification to wage jihad in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and Indian-occupied Kashmir. Religiously inspired gun-toting militant groups mushroomed, each with its own version of ‘true Islam’. The blasphemy law became an instrument to persecute religious minorities, dispense mob justice, and settle personal scores.
State institutions found it convenient to use these violent religious groups to pursue political engineering at home and jihad abroad. Under pressure from the international community and the blowback effects of their actions, the state curbed, prosecuted, and then dismantled jihadi outfits. Yet, it continued to use extremist, violent religious groups for domestic purposes to undermine civilian governments and to promote favoured political alternatives from 2013 to 2025.
Blowback and Ideological Shift
In spy parlance, blowback is the unintended negative consequence of a covert operation. The way our support for the Taliban and Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) has come to bite us is a classic case study of blowback theory. The crackdown on TLP is welcomed in wider civil society; even religious circles seem to have endorsed it by staying silent. The question remains: is this crackdown a genuine shift in ideology or an administrative measure against a virulent entity getting out of hand?
The state has been appeasing and retreating in the face of conservative orthodox forces since the adoption of the Objectives Resolution. This has not worked; it has only made them more toxic
Despite our scepticism, we assume that there is a shift in ideological approach in policy matters—probably less from a change of heart and more dictated by circumstances. The Taliban and TLP have been ‘veritable arms’ of our power circles for too long, both in ideological narrative and power dynamics. In pursuit of jihadist ideology and intolerant religious extremism, honest and fair policy debate has been severely curtailed. A sizeable section of society has genuinely come to believe in the ideology of these religious groups, because they were not presented with an alternative point of view—neither in school/madrassa textbooks, nor in media or academia.
Now is the time to think long-term and go back to the progressive, life-giving teachings of Iqbal, and move away from dogmatic, static, and closed ideology. It falls upon the state to relax its grip on the ‘free market of ideas’, and the intelligentsia must come up with an effective counter-narrative.
Power institutions also need to look inward to see how much religious intolerance and extremism have seeped into the structure of the state. Recruitment of civil and military officers and induction in the lower ranks need to be guarded against ideological obscurantism. It is high time to guard against the recruitment of graduates from thousands of religious seminaries. Entry exams, interviews, background checks, and psychological tests for fresh entrants must ensure that people with violent religious tendencies do not enter civil or military services.
There is no escape from Islam and its founder, M. A. Jinnah, in any national narrative-building in Pakistan. Also, ideology is not a substitute for justice, democracy, equality before law for every citizen, respect for popular will, and cultural diversity all under the Constitution. Let us seek unity under the Constitution and leave ideology as an aspirational goal. Every modern nation-state needs an ideology to seek unity and purpose, but it is not something that is enforced by law, as in our case; it is the collective will of the people to achieve a certain ideal.
Field Marshal Asim Munir has strong enough religious credentials, as a hafiz, to help reorient the ideological narrative towards a dynamic, progressive Islam as envisioned by our founding fathers, Iqbal and Jinnah. It is a difficult undertaking to change a mindset nurtured over several decades.
The Council of Islamic Ideology has twenty members, heavily represented by sectarian scholars trained in the traditional religious education system, with little understanding or appreciation of a modern state. Most of the members represent one or the other religious sect and uphold that narrow sectarian view on the Council. For course correction, the CII must have scholars with a deep understanding of the rise of nationalism, international relations, contemporary jurisprudence, and political philosophy that shaped the modern world order.
The Council exposed itself when, going far beyond its mandate, it passed a quasi-judicial order against a non-sectarian religious scholar and declared him guilty of blasphemy. As a first soft step, add a non-sectarian majority to the Council. The original Council of 1962 had superior court judges, university academics, historians, and Islamic scholars.
The Ruet-e-Hilal Committee is a superfluous body with no religious or temporal relevance. Moon sighting is the function of astronomy, not that of someone trained in the exegesis of scripture. This committee gives undue and unnecessary visibility and importance to those who possess no scientific knowledge to scan the skies for the movement of celestial bodies. Their methodology generates controversy and confusion about the exact date of the beginning of the Islamic calendar.
Dismantling the organisational structure of TLP, confiscating or relocating its properties, removing its leadership, and prosecuting them for criminal conduct is necessary. This, however, is not a long-term solution. Administrative and prosecutorial measures must be followed by building a counter-narrative to the ‘ownership’ of Islam by the seminary-trained orthodoxy.
Power institutions must decide never to appease nor manipulate religious forces for ulterior policy objectives. The state has been appeasing and retreating in the face of conservative orthodox forces since the adoption of the Objectives Resolution. This has not worked; it has only made them more toxic. The reason behind this endless agitation is that the ideals of personal piety, religious ideals, social good, political processes, and the state itself have been turned into a moral-religious enterprise. Let it be reiterated that the state is a man-made institution for collective safety and well-being, not a divinely enjoined entity.