In the national imagination, the birth of Pakistan is often portrayed as the culmination of a religious longing. A sacred dream realised through the unity of South Asia’s Muslims, guided by divine inspiration and righteous scholars. Politicians, school textbooks and official pronouncements have long presented this narrative as self-evident truth. It is widely claimed that the mullahs, the religious clerics, were not only supporters of Pakistan’s creation but its chief ideologues.
Yet when one examines the historical record, the political speeches, religious literature, party manifestos and public debates of the time, a very different reality emerges. Far from being ideological founders, many leading Islamic scholars and religious parties either opposed the creation of Pakistan outright or remained aloof from the Muslim League’s vision. They questioned its motives, doubted its sincerity and warned that it would result in a secular state masquerading as an Islamic one.
Ironically, it was these very figures who, once Pakistan came into existence, rebranded themselves as the defenders of its Islamic identity. They adopted a different language. They claimed the mantle of moral authority. And eventually, they captured the narrative, reshaping public memory to reflect a version of history they had once rejected.
This article examines how the mullahs opposed the very idea of Pakistan, how they reversed course after its creation and how their opportunism has since been used to hijack the country’s ideological direction. It is a story of religion turned into rhetoric, of slogans replacing sincerity and of how the betrayal of Islam in its name has derailed Pakistan’s moral and constitutional foundations.
Before Partition: Clerical Opposition to Pakistan
The most powerful and organised opposition to the creation of Pakistan came from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, a political and religious organisation of Deobandi clerics. Led by Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani, the JUH rejected the idea of a separate Muslim nation-state. Madani argued that Islam is not based on race, geography, or ethnicity. Instead, he maintained that Muslims could live alongside Hindus in a united India under a secular democratic system that guaranteed religious freedom and equal rights.
Not all religious clerics opposed the creation of Pakistan. A few prominent Barelvi scholars, especially from Punjab, extended limited support to the Muslim League
In his widely cited 1938 treatise, Muttahida Qaumiyat aur Islam, Madani insisted that the two-nation theory advanced by the Muslim League had no foundation in Islamic jurisprudence or history. According to him, Islam was a universal message, not a political ethnicity that required territorial boundaries. He accused Jinnah and the League of using Islam as a banner to promote the interests of the Muslim elite, rather than as a moral and spiritual framework. This ideological rejection is comprehensively discussed in Khalid Bin Sayeed’s Pakistan: The Formative Phase, 1857 to 1948, where the author notes that many JUH leaders even referred to Jinnah disparagingly as “Kafir-e-Azam”.
Their critique was not personal. It was theological and political. For the Deobandi scholars, Jinnah’s secular lifestyle, Western education and legalistic worldview made him an unsuitable leader for any Islamic cause. They questioned how a man who neither prayed publicly nor consulted the religious establishment could claim to speak on behalf of Islam.
Maududi’s Hard Line Against Muslim Nationalism
If the Deobandis opposed Pakistan based on their belief in composite nationalism, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, rejected it from a completely different angle. Unlike Madani, Maududi did not support Indian nationalism. His opposition was not based on the idea of Hindu-Muslim unity but on the grounds that the Muslim League was building a state for Muslims without building it on Islam.
Maududi denounced the League as secular opportunists exploiting religious emotions. In his view, creating a country for Muslims without ensuring that it would be governed by Sharia was not just a political mistake, it was a religious fraud. He argued that such a state would use the name of Islam while embracing Western systems of governance. As Syed Raza Murtaza writes in Jamaat-e-Islami and the Politics of Islamic Revivalism, Maududi repeatedly warned that “a secular Muslim state will be more dangerous than a secular Hindu-majority one, because it will use Islam as a cover while undermining its essence”.
Maududi’s writings were not abstract. They specifically condemned the two-nation theory, questioned Jinnah’s religious legitimacy and refused to align with the League in any form. His position was firm: without a complete Islamic transformation of politics, law and society, there was no value in merely carving out a Muslim-majority country.
The Barelvi Position: Reactive and Regional
Not all religious clerics opposed the creation of Pakistan. A few prominent Barelvi scholars, especially from Punjab, extended limited support to the Muslim League. Figures like Pir Jamaat Ali Shah and Syed Faiz-ul Hassan Shah publicly endorsed the idea of a Muslim homeland, though their reasons were often more emotional than ideological. Historian Usha Sanyal notes in her book Devotional Islam and Politics in British India that the Barelvi endorsement of Pakistan was largely shaped by regional power dynamics and rivalry with the Deobandi movement, rather than a principled theological alignment with the League’s politics.
Even among these supporters, few articulated any vision of what an Islamic Pakistan would look like. Majority of their support came in the form of public statements, prayers for Jinnah and ceremonial appearances. Their influence on the political structure of Pakistan remained minimal until after independence.
Jinnah’s Real Vision: A Muslim Homeland with Full Religious Freedom
It is vital to understand what Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself envisioned. While he demanded a separate homeland for Muslims, he did not seek a theocratic state ruled by clerics. His concern was that Muslims would become politically marginalised in a Hindu-majority India. He believed they deserved cultural security, political sovereignty and the ability to flourish as a majority. However, he made it equally clear that non-Muslims in Pakistan would be free, equal citizens, protected by law and constitution.
This is evident not only in Jinnah’s historic 11 August 1947 speech, where he declared that religion had nothing to do with the business of the state, but also in his interview with the Associated Press of America in July 1947. He stated, “Pakistan will be a democratic state in which Hindus and Sikhs will enjoy the same rights as Muslims. They will be free to go to their temples, their places of worship and have their religions as they like.”
Jinnah wanted a Muslim-majority state, not a cleric-controlled regime. He envisioned Pakistan as a republic rooted in justice, equality and religious tolerance, values at the very core of Islamic civilisation.
After Partition: The Clerics Reposition Themselves
After 14 August 1947, the map changed but the ideological confusion deepened. Jinnah died in 1948 and the Muslim League found itself ruling a country without a clear ideological blueprint. In that vacuum, the very religious parties and clerics who had denounced Pakistan began to reinvent themselves as its moral guardians.
Maulana Maududi migrated to Lahore, reestablished Jamaat-e-Islami and began calling for the Islamisation of the new state. His rationale was that although Pakistan had not been created as an Islamic state, it could still become one. His new mission was not to challenge the state, but to reshape it from within. The earlier criticism of the Muslim League was muted. The focus shifted to influencing the constitution, education system and legal code.
This realignment was not accompanied by any public admission of past opposition. On the contrary, religious parties began to portray themselves as original stakeholders in the Pakistan project. The ideological sleight of hand had begun.
The Objectives Resolution and the Road to Ambiguity
In 1949, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan introduced the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly. It declared that sovereignty belongs to Allah and that the state shall enable Muslims to order their lives according to Islam. Yet it also promised full rights to non-Muslims and guaranteed religious freedom.
The resolution was intentionally vague. It sought to satisfy all sides without resolving the fundamental question: Would Pakistan be an Islamic democracy or a religious state?
Leonard Binder, in Religion and Politics in Pakistan, writes that the Objectives Resolution was a tactical compromise. But it opened the door for future generations to argue that Pakistan had always been an Islamic state by design and therefore needed clerical oversight.
1953: The Anti-Ahmadi Riots and Religious Muscle
The turning point came in 1953, when a coalition of religious parties led an agitation to have Ahmadis declared non-Muslims. The campaign turned violent in Lahore. Shops were burnt. Lives were lost. Martial law was imposed for the first time in Pakistan’s history. Maulana Maududi was arrested and sentenced to death, though his sentence was later commuted.
This incident revealed a new truth. The clerics now had the power to mobilise crowds, paralyse cities and force the government into submission. It also marked the beginning of religious exclusionism as state policy.
From this moment on, Islam became a slogan, not a standard. The state began invoking Islam not to uphold moral principles, but to navigate political crises. And the clerics, once outside the system, now held its ideological keys.
Zia-ul-Haq and the Institutionalisation of Hypocrisy
The most profound transformation came under General Zia-ul-Haq, who overthrew Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 and promised to enforce Nizam-e-Mustafa, the Islamic system. Under Zia, religious clerics were placed in charge of shaping laws, textbooks and social codes. Hudood Ordinances were introduced. Blasphemy laws were expanded. Islamic punishments were institutionalised.
Zia’s Pakistan was no longer a country inspired by Islamic values. It was a state ruled by fear, censorship and theocratic theatre. Sermons replaced policies. Declarations replaced compassion. Slogans replaced sincerity.
Under Zia, the Jamaat-e-Islami, once critical of Pakistan’s secular foundations, was elevated to a position of privilege. The same Maududi whose speeches had attacked the Muslim League was now presented as a national ideologue. The textbooks were rewritten. The history was inverted.
It was during this period that Islam was officially weaponised. Not as a force for justice, humility and unity, but as a tool to punish, suppress and divide.
The 1974 Amendment and the Codification of Exclusion
A defining moment in Pakistan’s legal history came in 1974, under the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, when the National Assembly passed a constitutional amendment declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslims. This decision, while politically popular, had far-reaching consequences. It was the first time in Pakistan’s legislative record that the state officially defined who was and was not a Muslim, not based on belief in Islam’s fundamentals, but on alignment with a specific sectarian interpretation.
The Second Amendment was passed following violent street protests, led and instigated by clerical groups who demanded religious conformity through state legislation. The government, under pressure, formed a Special Committee of the Parliament to investigate Ahmadi beliefs in a manner that resembled religious inquisition more than constitutional deliberation.
As detailed in The Ahmadiyya Question by Ayesha Jalal, this move opened the floodgates for sectarian politics and gave legitimacy to the clerics’ demands that the state police belief. Jalal argues that “by turning faith into a matter of state jurisdiction, the government surrendered the spirit of Islam to the fear of the mullahs.”
The amendment did not calm the storm. It institutionalised division and set a precedent that more exclusions could be legislated in the name of Islam, often to appease populist clerical sentiments rather than uphold justice or unity.
The Post-Zia Clerical Surge and Rise of Tehreek-e-Labbaik
Following Zia-ul-Haq’s death in 1988, many hoped for a return to democratic norms and civil governance. But the infrastructure of clerical influence he had built remained embedded in Pakistan’s institutions. In fact, the next generation of religious politics found fertile ground, not just in seminaries and mosques, but in electoral politics, street power and media narratives.
Among the most visible expressions of this post-Zia clerical surge is the rise of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a political party founded in 2015 by cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi. The TLP’s entire platform is built on a single issue: the defence of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. It openly praises Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and has mobilised hundreds of thousands in street protests demanding harsher punishments for perceived religious offences.
As documented by Saeed Shafqat in Religion, Politics and Society in Pakistan, the rise of such groups shows how the post-Zia clerical culture has not only survived but mutated. Shafqat notes that “the TLP’s success is not because it represents the religious masses, but because successive governments have refused to challenge the political monopoly of clerics on religious discourse.”
TLP’s rise is not an isolated phenomenon. It reflects decades of state appeasement, textbook indoctrination and legal precedents that empowered religious pressure groups to dictate public morality and governmental legitimacy, all while hiding behind the veil of Islam.
Textbooks and the Rewriting of Moral Memory
The weaponisation of Islam by opportunistic clerics did not stop at policy or law. It extended to the classroom. Under Zia’s directives and later governments’ complicity, Pakistan’s school curricula were rewritten to reflect an increasingly narrow and militant interpretation of Islam. Facts were replaced with narratives. Religious diversity was erased. The mullahs who had once opposed Pakistan were recast as ideological architects of its creation.
In her comprehensive study The State and Curriculum in Pakistan, Rubina Saigol shows how textbooks in history and Islamic studies were carefully curated to align with clerical expectations. They emphasised war over peace, conformity over thought and identity over ethics. “Children were taught to revere slogans and fear difference,” Saigol writes. “The goal was not to create Muslims who understood Islam, but citizens who submitted to state-sanctioned theology.”
This manipulation of memory has had a generational effect. Entire cohorts of students grew up believing that Islam demands exclusion, that dissent is betrayal and that clerical authority is divine truth. It created a cognitive dissonance between Islamic values and the lived experience of religious authoritarianism in the name of Islam.
The Public Cost of Religious Hypocrisy
Behind every policy masked as Islamic lies a human cost. The laws created or weaponised by clerics have not protected society. They have polarised it. Women accused of adultery under the Hudood Ordinances have languished in jail for years. Minority communities live under the constant threat of blasphemy accusations, often with little legal recourse. Reformers, journalists and academics have been attacked or silenced simply for asking questions.
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, in his essay collection Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, writes that “when clerics become the arbiters of national conscience, hypocrisy becomes policy and religion becomes weapon.” He argues that Pakistan’s tragedy is not that it failed to implement Islam, but that it handed Islam over to those who used it for everything except morality.
This hypocrisy is not subtle. It is loud. Those who call for Islamic justice often ignore injustice in their own ranks. Those who speak of Sharia refuse to address corruption, inequality or violence when it serves their political allies. The selective silence of the mullahs has made the ethical force of Islam vanish from the public square.
A Nation at War With Itself
Today, Pakistan continues to present itself as an Islamic Republic. Yet it is a republic where violence in the name of religion is common, where minorities face mob justice and where clerics issue threats with impunity. The contradiction is not philosophical. It is structural.
The state was founded to provide dignity to Muslims. But it now often denies dignity to its own Muslim citizens, let alone to non-Muslims. Islam, which commands truth, fairness and mercy, is now routinely cited to justify coercion, bigotry and silence.
This is not the failure of Islam. It is the betrayal of Islam.
The mullahs who once rejected Pakistan now claim exclusive authority over its future. But their record speaks otherwise. Their opportunism, lack of consistency and misuse of religious power have led Pakistan down a path that bears little resemblance to the ideals of its founders or the teachings of Islam.
They use religion not as a guiding principle but as a political currency. They invoke faith to justify exclusion. They invoke Sharia to silence debate. They invoke Muslim unity to divide Muslims themselves. And all of it is done in the name of an Islamic Republic that was never meant to be ruled by religious merchants of fear.
Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims, not a prison for dissenters, not a theocracy for the powerful and certainly not a pulpit for hypocrisy. The people who fought for Pakistan wanted justice, cultural dignity and freedom of religion. Jinnah wanted a nation where Muslims could prosper and minorities could live with honour.
Yes, Pakistan is and should remain an Islamic Republic. But it must be guided by the ethics of real Islam, not the slogans of political mullahs. It must be led by sincere Muslims, not self-appointed gatekeepers of faith. Only then can Pakistan become the moral state it was meant to be.
Anything less is not Islam. And it is certainly not Pakistan.