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International Relationsof an Islamist Movement: The Case of the Jamaat-i

Islami of Pakistan

Vali Nasr

counci l on foreign re la t ions

new york

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The Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan nationalorganization and think tank founded in 1921, is dedicated to promotingunderstanding of international affairs through the free and civil exchange of ideas.The Councils members are dedicated to the belief that Americas peaceand prosperity are firmly linked to that of the world. From this flows theCouncils mission: to foster Americas understanding of other nationstheirpeoples, cultures, histories,hopes, quarrels,and ambitionsand thus to serveour nation through study and debate, private and public.

From time to time books, reports, and papers are written by members of theCouncils research staff or others are published as a Council on Foreign RelationsPublication.

THE COUNCIL TAKES NO INSTITUTIONAL POSITION ON POLICY ISSUES AND HAS NO AFFILIATION WITH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.ALL STATEMENTS OF FACT AND EXPRESSIONS OF OPINION CON- TAINED IN ALL ITS PUBLICATIONS ARE THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE AUTHOR OR AUTHORS.

For further information on Council publications, please write the Council on

Foreign Relations, 58 East 68th Street, New York,NY 10021,or call the Directorof Communications at (212) 434-9400. Or visit our website at www.cfr.org.

Copyright 2000 by the Council on Foreign Relations , Inc.All rights reserved.Printed in the United States of America.

This book may not be reproduced , in whole or in part, in any form (beyondthat copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and excerpts by the reviewers for the public press), without written permis-sion from the publisher. For information, write the Publications Office,Council on Foreign Relations, 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10021.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data being processed.

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Foreword

Understanding and dealing with Islamic fundamentalism hasbeen one of the more difficult foreign policy challenges for theUnited States in the last decade.Few policymakers seem to com-prehend the ideology behind so-called fundamentalist groups,orthe rationales behind their actions. While some analysts call itthe successor to the Red Scare and have dubbed it the GreenMenace, others contend that these groups are essentially socialmovements with a religious emphasis.Whichever view is correct,there is broad agreement that the topic of Islamic fundamental-ism requires further attention, and the papers from the MuslimPolitics Project hope to address this issue.

The goal of the Muslim Politics Project, which began in1994, was to counter the misperceptions that prevail in influen-tial circles and to present Islamic intellectual and political agen-das in all their complexity and diversity. One of its several un-dertakings was to commission papers on Islamist foreign policy

in order to better understand the international political attitudesand policies of various Islamist groups. This resulted in paperson the following movements: Jamaat-i Islami in Pakistan,Hamas, Hizballah, the Taliban, the Central Asian Islamic Re-naissance Party, as well as an analysis of U.S. policy toward Is-lamism.Each of these papers goes into detail not only about themovements themselves, but how it affects U.S. foreign policy.

We believe that they provide insights on a topic that challengespolicymakers and will help prevent future misunderstandings.

Lawrence J. KorbMaurice R. Greenberg Chair, Director of Studies

Council on Foreign Relations

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Acknowledgments

The Muslim Politics Project was made possible by the generoussupport of the Ford Foundation. This project began under theleadership of former Council Senior Fellow James Piscatori and

was brought to conclusion by Directors of Studies Gary Hufbauerand Lawrence J. Korb. However this project could not have beencompleted without the guidance of the Studies staff includingNancy Bodurtha,Rachel Bronson,Richard Murphy, and BarnettRubin.Patricia Dorff,Miranda Kobritz,Roshna Balasubramanian,and Michael Moskowitz provided copyediting and productionassistance. Hilary Mathews provided initial editorial assistance,and Haleh Nazeri completed the editing and supervised theadministrative and final production arrangements.

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introduction There is much written about the impact of Islamist forces on in-ternational politics. Comparatively little is known about how Is-lamist forces conceive of the international arena, understandtheir interests therein, and formulate policies to serve those in-terests. It is the aim of this paper to elucidate Islamist thinkingon international aairs by exploring the directives that are inher-ent to the Islamist ideological discourse, as well as the impera-tives that confront Islamism in the political arena, by examiningthe case of the Jamaat-i Islami (Islamic Party) of Pakistan.

The Legacy of Pan-IslamismIslamist thinking about international issues begins with the vi-sion of the larger Muslim world.Islamism since the time of Jamalal-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897), the forerunner of modern Islamistactivism and a prime advocate of Islamic unity, has possessed aninternational, pan-Islamic dimension.1Revivalists have aspired,in varying degrees, to give meaning to the Islamic notion of umma(holy or virtuous community), and even to reconstitute thecaliphate as a transnational institution of authority. Such eortsas the Khilafat (caliphate) movement in India from 1919-19212 orthe Muslim congresses that convened in the Middle East after

World War I have sought to put into practice the universalistclaims of revivalism. 3 The symbolism of theumma and thecaliphate have since been used by activists to construct an ideal

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vision of sociopolitical change and to gain legitimacy andstrength in politics.4 The central role that the desire for unity plays in Muslim politics has led some observers to view Islam andthose who advocate its participation in politics as fundamentally at odds with both the spirit and reality of the nation-state sys-tem. Such characterizations are not supported by empirical evi-dence. Islamic universalism has been kept at bay by the reality of the nation-state. The rhetoric of universalism withstanding, Is-lamist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the

Jamaat-i Islami, have divided up along national lines and devel-oped as national political organizations. In the same vein, the Is-lamic Republic of Iran has failed to break out of its Iranian mold,and over time its foreign policy has been decided by national in-terest; 5 still, based on the rhetoric of Muslim groups and espe-cially of Islamist movements and parties,many continue to view revivalists as internationalists bent on overrunning nationalboundaries in their attempts to construct an Islamdom.6

Constructing an image of Islamist forces based on aface-value reading of their rhetoric,however, tends to obfuscatemore than it reveals about the nature of their politics and atti-tudes about international issues. First, it is not possible to dis-cern a singular Islamist attitude toward international politics,or

pan-Islamism and its constituent symbols, for that matter. Theprevalent use of terms such asummaor caliphate in the revival-ist literature may lead observers to conclude that these termsmean the same things they did in classical texts, or that they areinterpreted uniformly among dierent movements. In fact, Is-lamist forces are often at loggerheads as to the exact meaning of such foundational concepts. In this regard, Islamists are not very dierent from other ideological movements, particularly com-munism, that have preceded them.

Second, a face-value reading of the earlier revivalist and themore recent Islamist rhetoric tends to make ideology the dom-inant criterion in discerning attitudes toward international is-sues, which may be misleading. Like all political forces, Islamicgroups and parties are motivated by the imperatives and con-straints that confront them in the political arena.

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Third, universalist rhetoric may serve dierent purposes fordierent political forces. For instance, it is debatable if, duringthe Iran-Iraq war, the Islamic Republic of Iran was motivatedby Islamic universalism or Iranian nationalism.7 The interlink-age between ideological posturing and nationalist aims is not

very dierent from what was witnessed in other ideologicalstates or movements, as during the heyday of Arab nationalismor in the post-Stalinist era of communism.

Finally, looking solely at what activists say diverts attentionfrom the manner in which states knowingly or inadvertently shape the international attitudes of the Islamist groups.That is,the approaches of Islamists to foreign policy and internationalconcerns are only partly conditioned by ideology and cannot besatisfactorily explained except by examining state policy and theregional and international context in which ideological direc-tives are implemented. There is a great deal more complexity and nuance involved here than a simple reading of Islamistrhetoric would lead one to believe.

The Jamaat-i Islami of Pakistan provides a valuable casestudy for examining the issues raised above.This paper will usethe case of the Jamaat to address a number of specic concernsabout what Islamists demand in terms of foreign policy, how

they conceive of the international system, and how their en-gagement in international issues has changedor can changetheir ideological outlooks and political programs.

First formed in British India in 1941 by Sayyid Abul AlaMawdudi (190379), the Jamaat split into independent Pak-istani and Indian units following the partition of the subconti-nent in 1947. In 1971, a Bangladeshi unit was formed, and sincethen Jamaat-i Islami parties or aliations have also formed inSri Lanka, western Europe, and North America, the latter twostill embryonic in form.8 In Pakistan the Jamaat has operated asa national party since 1947,playing a central role in the directionof state formation and the unfolding of key political events inPakistans history.9 The interaction of the Jamaats worldview and its pragmatic reactions to the imperatives of foreign policy-making, which will be detailed in the following pages, have

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shaped the partys outlook on international politics in general,as well as its particular role in Pakistani politics.

mawdudis ideology and the contoursof the jama ats foreign pol icy

The Legacy of British Rule in IndiaAlthough foreign policy was not a constituent part of the

Jamaats initial program, the partys agenda was premised fromthe outset on a particular view of international aairs shaped atthe time of Indias struggle for independence. Thus the party

was clearly aware of the structure of global relations, in whichthe imperial powers reigned supreme and colonial populations

were not aorded sovereignty or status commensurate with thatenjoyed by Western powers. The consciousness of imperialism,however, did not translate into the kind of nationalism that

Jawaherlal Nehru or Mahatma Gandhi advocated. It gave shapeinstead to the tendency that had characterized Indian Muslimssince the advent of the British ordernamely, the desire to con-struct a normative order that would allow them to live accord-ing to their own standards and ideals.10 The notion of a discrete

Islamic system that would preserve Muslim faith and culturallife and limit Western penetration of Muslim India was rstoated by the inuential ulama(religious authorities) of theDeoband school, who since midnineteenth century had dom-inated the religious scene in north India.11By the turn of thecentury, the desire for autonomy had become institutionalizedin Muslim religious and political discourse and had begun toshape the political outlook of the Indian Muslim community.

The concept of a distinct normative order was not only func-tionally desirable but also of great symbolic importance as itharkened to the Islamic ideal of theumma. Within it, there wasthe impetus to purify as well as preserve orthopraxy in observanceof the faith. This made unity, and the ideals, institutions, andeven sites that conjure it, central to Indian Muslim politics. Inthe nineteenth century, Indian Muslims had forced the British

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to defend holy shrines in the Hijaz from destruction at the handsof Wahhabis. At the turn of the century, Muslims in the city of Hyderabad mobilized nancial resources to help Medina (thesecond most holy city of Islam) during a time of nancial hard-ship.12 The sense of closeness with the heartlands of Islam wasalso fostered by historical legacies and institutional contacts.TheAsiyah dynasty of Hyderabad, whosenizams(hereditary rulersof Hyderabad before 1947) ruled over the largest princely state inBritish India, traced their lineage to the Ottomans, just as sev-eral Shiite nawabs (Muslim princes in India) and noblemen of northern India traced their ancestry tosayyid (descendants of theProphet Muhammad) families of Iran and Iraq. The claims of shrines and institutions from Uch Sharif in southern Punjab tothe Jama mosque of Delhi to hold symbolic relics, such asQurans ostensibly inscribed by Ali ibn Abi Talib (the son-in-law of the prophet and the fourth caliph), strands of hair from theprophets beard, or footprints of Ali, attest to the preoccupationof Indian Muslims with the unity of the larger Islamic world andits importance to political power and legitimacy.

Institutional contacts between theulamaand the centers of learning in Iran and Iraq (for Shiites), and Sunni madrassas (re-ligious schools) in the Arabian peninsula and al-Azhar in

Egypt, reinforced this tendency. Until recently, the majority of Shiite ulamaof the subcontinent were students of AyatollahAbul-Qasim Khui of Najaf in Iraq; today there are more than6,000 Pakistani seminary students in Qum, Iran. Institutionalcontacts between South Asian Shiism and the faiths centers of learning in Iraq and Iran remain strong.

During the tumultuous decades that led to the partition of the Indian subcontinent, politics and ideological posturing be-came increasingly anchored in discussions about the nature anddesirability of reconstituting anummato preserve and promoteMuslim piety and cultural independence. The apprehension

with which some Muslims viewed the program of the CongressParty and its conception of secular and composite nationalismconverted the notion of an idealummaas a separate norma-tive orderinto a surrogate for nationalism.As a result, political


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mobilization increasingly invoked symbols of Muslim unity. The Khilafat movement that marked the beginning of openMuslim political activism in the context of the independencemovement was the best example of this trend. Ironically, it waslaunched in defense of an Islamic institution that symbolizedthe unity of the Muslim world, and yet the fate of the caliphatelay in the hands of the newly installed Turkish republic.

The religious and political vision of Jamaat-i Islamis chief ideologue and long time leader, Mawlana Mawdudi, was shaped

within this context.13From early on he revealed a deep concern with the notion of the umma. This concern surfaces in his writ-ing at two points: when discussing the creation of a pure Islamicorder at the local level, and when envisioning a universal Islamicorder. Both developments are predicated on the creation of trueummas. To understand Mawdudis international vision, it is im-portant to discern how his conceptions of the universal and localumma interact, and when and how they separate. Since the

Jamaats foreign policy is rooted in these conceptions, theconicts and contradictions inherent in Mawdudis thinking arealso those which have riddled the Jamaats foreign policy.

Early on, the notion of a universalumma appears to havebeen more important to Mawdudi than that of a local one. Dur-

ing his initiation into politics in the context of the Indian na-tionalist movement, even before he embarked on an activistagenda, he was impressed by pan-Islamism and its ideal of theuniversalumma.14In 1921, Mawdudi joined the Tahrik-i Hijrat(Migration Movement) to protest British rule over India.15 The

Tahrik was premised on the notion that since India was nolonger part of dar al-Islam(land of Islam), all Indian Muslimsshould emigrate to Afghanistan, where Islam continued toreign. The traditional Islamic division of the world intodar al- Islamand dar al-harb (abode of war), which undergirded the Tahriks logic, framed the problem of British imperialism not asone of foreign rule over India, but as one of non-Muslim ruleover Muslimsa problem not limited to one geographical ter-ritory or nation but involving all Muslims alike. Imperialismcould not, therefore, be overcome by nationalism but through

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the creation and preservation of an Islamicumma.In this case,sustaining an Islamic normative order in India was not enough;Muslims needed to move physically beyond the purview of British authority.

Interestingly, this approach was to surface in Mawdudisthinking in later years. In 1951, for instance, he caused a major re-ligious dispute in Pakistan by declaring that India wasdar al-kufr (land of unbelief ), and that Pakistanis were forbidden to marry anyone from India and to accept any inheritances from there. In-dian and Pakistani ulamadid not share Mawdudis views andstrongly objected to his declaration.16 Traces of a vision of the

world divided into an Islamicummaand non-Muslim dar al-harb would periodically continue to surface in Mawdudis works.

The Impact of the Khilafat Movement Similar considerations governed Mawdudis understanding of the aim and political function of the Khilafat movement. Forhim the caliphate stood not only as the symbol of Muslim unity but as a sacrosanct institution that would preserve that unity andgive shape to a transnationalumma whose borders would en-compass all Muslim territories. The Khilafat movement wasthus simultaneously a struggle against Western imperialism

(which he viewed as the principal obstacle to Muslim unity) andan armation of the centrality of the ummaas an ideal as wellas a reality for Muslim life.

The abolition of the caliphate by the new Turkish republicin 1924 ended the Khilafat movement in India, with major im-plications for Mawdudis thinking. He was greatly perturbed by Arab hostility to Ottoman rule,and more important, by the cav-alier fashion in which Turkey had discarded the caliphate. Inboth cases he believed nationalists in collusion with Europeanshad betrayed Islam.17 It was then that Mawdudi developed hisdeep-seeded suspicion of nationalism, which he came to view asa surreptitious form of Western domination and the foremostthreat to the realization of theumma.18

Despite his open hostility to nationalism, Mawdudi becamecognizant of its seeming inevitability. The end of the caliphate


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had proved that nationalism, for better or worse, was a force whose grip on the Muslim imagination was only likely to grow.Moreover, with the caliphate out of the picture, theumma wasunlikely to materialize as a territorial reality. However, it waslikely to shape how Muslims might imagine or idealize their re-lations to others in the international arena.From that point on,Mawdudi tacitly accepted nationalism in the framework of hisidealization of theumma.He would seek to address and accom-modate both, sometimes conceding the reality of thenation-state system and other times asserting the inevitable as-cendance of theumma.Consequently, without a clear-cut direc-tive regarding the primacy of the nation orumma, Mawdudisthinking on international issues is uncertain and ambiguous.

The Legacy of Communalism and Muslim SeparatismIn broad brush, there were two Muslim positions in India dur-ing the interwar period. First, there were those Muslim intel-lectual and political leaders who supported the Congress Party,actively participated in its politics, and encouraged their fellow Muslims to do the same.19 They were ercely anti-imperialistand viewed opposition to the British to be the foremost concernof their community. Second, there were those Muslim leaders,

exemplied and later led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah (d.1948) inthe Muslim League, who did not view the struggle against theBritish to be the paramount concern of the Muslims and re-mained apprehensive about living as a minority in a predomi-nantly Hindu India.They believed that Muslims were best ad-

vised to reassess their commitment to the Congress Party and tofocus on safeguarding and furthering their communal interestsbefore an uncertain future.Mawdudi articulated his views amidthe lively and bitter debate between Jinnah and the Muslim sup-porters of the Congress Party. Some of Mawdudis most lucidexpositions on the relation between religion, society, and poli-tics were recorded in books on Muslim politics of the time, withsuch titles as Muslims and the Current Political Struggle (Musul-man awr mawjudah siyasi kashmakash) orQuestion of National-ity (Masalah-i qaumiyat).

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As discussed above, Mawdudi was not in favor of secular na-tionalism; however, this did not mean that he was oblivious tonationalist sentiments and arguments or uninuenced by the na-tionalist paradigm. Contrary to popular assertion,he was not op-posed to Pakistan, but he objected to Jinnah and the MuslimLeagues conception of it.Much like Jinnah,Mawdudi viewed theactivities of the Congress Party with apprehension. He was notconvinced of the sagacity of vesting Muslim interests in the for-tunes of the struggle for independence, and he strongly criticizedthe blind anti-imperialism that had led many Muslims in to thefold of the Congress Party.For Mawdudi,anti-imperialism wouldonly make sense in an Islamic milieu.

Mawdudi also rmly opposed the suggestion that the Con-gress Party represented Muslim interests, or that it could do soin a future Indian republic. He was particularly sensitive to any suggestion that it was religiously incumbent on Muslims to sup-port the Congress Party in its struggle to free India from theclutches of British rule. This soon led Mawdudi into a heateddebate with senior Indianulama who supported the CongressParty and who were bent on using Islam to mobilize support forthe independence movement. When the renowned Indian Is-lamic leader and the head of the eminent Jamiaat-i ulama-i

Hind (Society of Indian ulama), Mawlana Husain AhmadMadani (d.1957), wrote Islam and Composite Nationalism(Islamawr mutahhadih qaumiyat), depicting a multicommunal Indianstate that would be compatible with the teachings of Islam,Mawdudi reacted strongly, attacking Madani in public speechesand in a number of tracks.20

Madanis book,along with the Congress Partys direct appealto Muslims through such measures as the mass contact move-ment, which was directed at taking the Congress Partys mes-sage to the Muslim masses and recruiting larger numbers of Muslims into the party, convinced Mawdudi that the rst orderof business was to close o the Muslim community to the Con-gress Party. He articulated an Islamist ideology from that pointon in order to preclude the possibility of a composite national-ism. Islamism for Mawdudi was the assertion of the Muslim


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communitys prerogative to determine the limits of individualmoral behavior and dene the nature of a Muslims relation toIslam; But more important and as a result, it was the means tocreate impregnable walls around the Muslim community. By in-terpreting Islam as an ideology for a vigilant community thatemphasized puritanism, the exoteric dimensions of the faith,and strict obedience to Islamic law, and by discouraging thosecustoms and rituals that resembled Hindu practices or couldserve as a bridge to Hinduism, Mawdudi moved to change thecultural milieu of Indian Islam as well as the context in whichMuslims were encountering the political choices before them.As the balance of relations between Muslims and Hindus wouldchange at the national level and in neighborhoods, towns, and

villages, composite nationalism would cease to be a viable op-tion. In the process, the resurgence of Islamic sentiments, as in-terpreted by Mawdudi,would lay the foundations for organiza-tion building and political activism. Mawdudis conception of the revival and reform of Islam, therefore, was at its inceptiontantamount to radical communalism.

Mawdudis vision was not antistate or anti-imperialist perseat least not at rstbut it aimed at stymieing the progressof the Congress Party and the political ascendancy of the Hindu

community. Those whom it viewed as traitors to the cause of Islam were not only secular or modernist Muslims but were thespokesmen of orthodoxytheulama. Treason here was not tothe faith, but to the communal interests of Muslims. Nor wasMawdudis conception of Islam driven by the yearning for an im-probable utopia; it had a clear aim and a denite functional use.

The Jamaat-i Islami was founded on the idea of theummaas an unadulterated and exclusive embodiment of the vision of Islam that would preclude cultural coexistence with Hindus.

The party would serve as a vehicle for propagating this vision,and hence control Muslim politics of the time. Echoes of thisoriginal intent are clearly reected in the subsequent develop-ment of Mawdudis discourse. The communalist directivecouched in universalist rhetoricwhereby the quest forummaserves to dene a community separate from Indian society in na-

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tional terms rather than purely theological onesmade Maw-dudis ideology ineluctably tied to questions of nationhood,sep-aratism, sovereignty, territorial borders, and how these may berelated to Muslimness.

Still, the ideal of theumma was signicant in itself. No soonerhad the Jamaat formed than Mawdudi established a bureaucharged with translating his works into Arabic.21Persian and

Turkish translations soon followed.Clearly,Mawdudi felt a unity of purpose with Arab,Persian, and Turkish Muslims and viewedthe Jamaats activities and his own ideas as relevant to their livesand causes. This universalist outlook was instilled in the Jamaatand became part of its mission.In time, the translation eorts en-trenched the universalist image of the party as they promotedMawdudi as an international Islamic thinker whose ideas havebeen instrumental in shaping Islamism across the Muslim world.

The interplay of universalism and nationalism, as mentionedabove, made Mawdudis position on international aairs quitecomplex and at times obfuscated its direction. At the utopianlevel, Mawdudis ideology was pan-Islamic in tone and intent,committed to the universalism of theumma. In practice, how-ever, it operated in the communalist and nationalist milieu from

which Mawdudis political vision drew inspiration, and in which

his organization and program of action took shape. This is evi-dent in Mawdudis suggestions in 1938 that India become atwo-nation federation consisting of 14 Muslim territories anda single Hindu one, tied together only for defense, communica-tions and trade.22 This state within a state(riyasat dar riyasat ),as Mawdudi called it, was a fusion of the conception of IndianMuslims as anumma with a nation-state concept of India.

With time, Mawdudi would become even more accommo-dating of the reality of nationhood and a world order based onnation-states.When India was partitioned in 1947, the Jamaat-iIslami was also divided into separate Pakistani and Indian (andKashmiri) units, sharing Mawdudis ideology but workingthrough independent organizational structures dened in termsof the national polity in which they operated.Mawdudi justiedthis move by arguing that each organization would face dierent


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political realities under separate national circumstances andcould not be caught in the middle of conicts between Pakistanand India. By giving up his leadership of the Indian Jamaat-iIslami and breaking the embryonicummaalong national lines,Mawdudi eectively surrendered the ideal of theumma to thereality of the developing nation-state order in the region.In later

years, new Jamaat-i Islamis would emerge in Sri Lanka andBangladesh, again independent of one another and of the In-dian and Pakistani units.

The Search for a Space Between Socialism and Capitalism Western ideologies were important inuences on Mawdudisthinking on international aairs. Mawdudi was always keen tocompare Islam with socialism and capitalism rather than withChristianity, attesting not only to the fact that he saw Islam asa sociopolitical system and an ideology, but that he was preoc-cupied by Western political and institutional values and ideals.

Mawdudis discourse, much like that of other Islamistthinkers, displays distrust and hostility toward the West. Maw-dudi viewed the West as an evil force determined to destroy Islamand subjugate Muslims politically and culturally. As a result,Mawdudi was eager not only to empower Muslims politically but

to safeguard their cultural autonomy. Anti-Westernism largely dened Mawdudis understanding of modern international rela-tions;nevertheless,his stance on the relations between Islam andthe West was also informed by more nuanced thinking.

First of all, Mawdudis opposition to the West was condi-tioned by his communalist inclination. Mawdudi typied theNorth Indian Muslim noble who, disenfranchised by theBritish, blamed colonial rule for the marginalization of IndianMuslims and the ascendancy of Hindus. Still, his primary con-cern was not with imperialism but with containing Hindupower. Anti-Westernism was therefore important to Mawdudi,but it was not the animating force of his activism. He respondedto conicts in the Indian social context, and he then gave themmeaning in the more general framework of relations betweenIslam and the West.

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The greater relevance of the West to Mawdudis discourselies in his belief that Western values had weakened and wouldcontinue to weaken Muslims, and obversely, that Muslimsmight gain power and subdue Hindus only if they returned tothe pristine teachings of their faitha task that would begin

with purifying their lives of Western inuences. More immedi-ately, his critique of the West was concerned with asserting so-cial control over Muslims and denying the possibility of controlto the Congress Party. The political ideology of Indian nation-alism was Western in orientation; it drew on Western ideals of nationhood and democracy. By rejecting these ideals as alien toIslam, Mawdudi in eect sought to close the Muslim commu-nity to the appeal of the Congress Partys message.Although theanti-Western posture became institutionalized in Mawdudisideology, the fact that its use was tied to communalist objectivesgreatly complicated the role that it would play in the Jamaat-iIslamis policies in the following years.

Although he was anti-Western, Mawdudis dismissal of the West was no mere blanket rejection. In fact, he was quite con-cerned with the details of Western ideas and political institutions,and he distinguished between the evils of capitalism and of so-cialism.Beyond his general condemnations,one nds more com-

plex analyses of the West and,by implication,international aairs.Mawdudi was critical of what he understood capitalisms andsocialisms positions to be on individual rights and needs.23Hesaw capitalism and socialism as lacking ethical valuesthey weresecular worldviews unable to address social and individual con-cerns satisfactorily.He argued that only Islam is based on an eth-ical perspective that can strike a tenable balance between the goodof society as a whole and the interests of the individual. Mawduditherefore viewed Islam as an alternative to both capitalism and so-cialism, embodying all the virtues of the two systems and none of their shortcomings. This was a Third Worldist conception of sorts, but despite its aspiration to rise above the two poles of cap-italism and socialism, it never fully eluded their magnetic pull.

In practice, Mawdudi was more wary of socialism than of capitalism. This attitude was shaped by his reading of the poli-


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tics of the princely state of Hyderabad, where he had grown upand where his family had been tied to the nizams court. Eversince the 1930s and the 1940s, when the communist movementin Telangana had seriously challenged thenizamsregime, com-munism had become a major threat to the princely state. Maw-dudi viewed the communists as allies of the Congress Party andinstruments for dismantling Muslim rule and empowering theHindu peasantry. In addition, Mawdudis attitudes toward so-cialism reected the pro-Pakistan Muslims disdain for Jawa-herlal Nehru, his socialist politics, and his views on the future of India. For these Muslims, socialism was closely associated withNehru and Indian nationalism, and as such had to be resisted.

Mawdudis communalist outlook had prejudiced him againstthe left, which he viewed as anti-Muslim. This attitude wouldstay with him throughout his life and would keep the Jamaat-iIslami on the right, inuencing the partys foreign policy posi-tions in the same manner. It is thus not surprising that the

Jamaat assumed a leading role in supporting the Afghan resis-tance to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Moreover, Mawdudi was not persuaded by Marxist argu-ments, and in economic matters he always remained conserva-tive. He defended the sanctity of private property in Islam, even

when it was politically costly. For example, Mawdudi opposedthe Pakistani governments attempts to introduce land reformthroughout the 1950s for the reason that it violated Islams teach-ings on the right to property. Similarly, throughout the 1960s

when the left gained strength by exploiting income inequality born of rapid industrialization and rural poverty, the Jamaatavoided populist formulas or challenges to the structure of eco-nomic relations.

The Role of Islamic and Islamist ConceptsMawdudis international vision was also inuenced by how he un-derstood and interpreted key Islamic and Islamist conceptstheformer being the tenets and teachings of the faith, and the latterpertaining to the specic interpretations and ideological formula-tions of contemporary Islamist movements. Mawdudi has been

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responsible for the wide use and particular reading of many of these concepts, a few of which are especially relevant to the dis-cussion here: jihad, the Islamic state (including discussions of Is-lamic economics), and minority and human rights.

jihad and holy warIslamists and the Western media use the term jihad indiscrimi-nately: the former to legitimate political struggles in religiousterms, and the latter to conjure images of blood, violence, andunrelenting intolerance and hate. In the process,a complex doc-trine with broad possibilities for interpretation has been reducedto a battlecry in the Islamists struggle against the West.

Mawdudis use of the term jihad does not t the general con-text in which it is used by Islamists. In fact, Mawdudi con-sciously avoided invoking caricatures of jihad . He once arguedthat jihad must not represent a crazed faith . . . . Muslims withblood-shot eyes, shouting Allahu akbar,decapitating an unbe-liever wherever they see one, cutting o heads while invokingLailaha illa-llah. 24 Although Mawdudi had been prone to view-ing the world asdar al-Islam versusdar al-harb,his teachings on

jihad do not reveal such a tendency. Rather, Mawdudi inter-

preted the doctrine in a nuanced manner that favored its use inpolitics in a limited and regulated fashion within the context of the nation-state system.

Mawdudis earliest work on jihad,al-Jihad l-Islam(Jihadin Islam), published rst in 1930, was written in response to at-tacks on the doctrine pursuant to the murder of an anti-MuslimHindu revivalist preacher.25Disturbed by the English-speakingmedias characterization of Islam as a religion of violence andthe impact that such characterizations had on the morale of ed-ucated Muslims, Mawdudi decided to outline the meaning andconditions for the use of jihad. In this work, Mawdudi soughtto show that jihad is a coherent doctrine of war governed by clear-cut procedural and juridical rules. In this regard it does notdier greatly from Western doctrines of war, defense of therealm,and the like.By juxtaposing jihad with Western doctrines


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of war, Mawdudi moved to integrate a conception of Muslimpolitical life into the international system and to use the normsof that system to rationalize and formalize jihad as a properly regulated doctrine of war. Far from harkening to pan-Islamicatavism or dusting o the doctrine to use it against the rulingestablishment, Mawdudi used jihad as an instrument to mod-ernize Islamic perspectives on international aairs.

The impact of this process became evident in a tussle over theuse of jihad by Pakistan soon after it was created. In April 1948,the governments of India and Pakistan reached a ceasere agree-ment in their conict over Kashmir. Pakistan, however, contin-ued surreptitiously to support volunteer freedom ghters.Given their status as volunteers, the guerillas were not boundby the terms of the ceasere, and the government could not beresponsible for a campaign declared by nongovernmental actors.

Mawdudi was not persuaded by this line of reasoning andstrongly criticized Pakistans course of action. In a letter to oneof Pakistans seniorulamaat the time, Mawdudi argued that re-gardless of the merits of the ceasere agreementto which he

was actually opposedits terms were binding on all Pakistanicitizens after it had been signed by the government. In eect, he

was reasoning that the nation-state of Pakistan was the only le-

gitimate international actor, and nonstate actors could not con-duct foreign policies of their own. Later he added that so longas the government of Pakistan was bound by the terms of itsceasere agreement with India, it could not declare a jihad inKashmir lest it violate the shariasinjunction that a governmentabide by the terms of an agreement that it has signed. Since

jihad had to be declared by a state, there was no possibility thatany other source could declare one, and hence there could be nomilitary campaign for the volunteer force-ghting in Kash-mir. Mawdudi would have liked Pakistan to end its ceasere andgo to war with India, in which case it could declare jihad; bar-ring that, it could neither declare jihad nor ght a covert war.

The state viewed Mawdudis arguments as seditious and thusimprisoned him. It is important to note that it was the Pakistani

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state that was pushing for an undisciplined and militant use of jihad, not the countrys principal Islamist party.

In later years, however, the Jamaat would prove to be moreopen to the use of jihad and less emphatic on the rules and reg-ulations that should govern its declaration. This developmenthad less to do with ideology or militancy than with the realitiesof operating in the political process. Mawdudis 1948 decree on

jihad in Kashmir had been unpopular. His principled stancethen was viewed as unpatriotic, especially after the Kabul andSrinagar radios broadcast it widely as a fatwa (legal opinion).Moreover, although Mawdudi had been more hardline onKashmir than the governmentfavoring a resumption of war

with Indiahis arguments were lost on the public in the cho-rus of accusations that he was subverting the struggle in Kash-mir. The Jamaat thenceforth became more cautious in engag-ing in hair-splitting debates over use of jihad, and more eager tobe on the forefront of its invocation, especially in Kashmir. Forinstance, in 1999 the Jamaat strongly supported Pakistans deci-sion to send militants into Kargil in Kashmir. The party stageda strongly antigovernment demonstration in Lahore in July 1999to protest Pakistans decision to withdraw the militants. In 1999the Jamaats position on conduct of jihad by nongovernment ac-

tors in Kashmir was a completevolte face from its policy in 1948.In addition, the Afghan war has made jihad more central topolitical posturing of Islamist groups. It has been a watershedevent that has deeply impressed the Jamaatsas well as otherIslamist organizationsthinking on jihad. During the Afghan

war a new ideological and organizational model surfaced,whichhas since conditioned the development of the newer breed of Pakistani Islamists forces.This model is more strident in its rev-olutionary rhetoric and advocates military and guerilla organi-zational practices. A number of Islamist youth groups, for in-stance, have adopted this model, favoring declaring the state asun-Islamic and initiating an armed struggle against it.

The Afghan jihad was conceived of by the United States andPakistan and received strong nancial and moral support fromSaudi Arabia. These patrons enlisted the help of the Jamaat,


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and the party beneted nancially and politically from the warand developed certain vested interest in its continuation. Still,the most important impact of the war was ideological. It led the

Jamaat to place too much importance on Islamic symbolism asa force to mobilize an eective opposition (in this it was also de-luded by the outcome of the Iranian revolution), and too littleimportance in the strategic and nancial alliances that sup-ported the mujahideen eorts in Afghanistan. As a result, the

Jamaats foreign policy has become jihad-oriented, desper-ately seeking to capture the Afghan moment by advocatingother jihads. Veterans of the Afghan conict who now ghttheir governments in Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya,or Kashmir also came away with the delusion that the Afghancampaign was a simple triumph of jihad over secularism.

The same is true of Islamist groups in Pakistan whose ji-hadist outlook parallels that of the Jamaat and encouragesthe party to view jihad as a suitable model for struggle forpower and a useful paradigm for explicating the Islamistagenda and its conception of political action to the Pakistanipublic. In this climate the Jamaat has become more open tousing the concept of jihad in its political platform. The partysleader Qazi Husain Ahmad has conrmed the centrality of

jihad to the Jamaats political discourse by declaring that thenegation of the holy war was in fact negation of life itself.26He has also repeatedly threatened Pakistani governments

with launching jihad. The party has carefully cultivated the jihad consciousness, which it then uses in its struggle of power with the state.

It is true that the idealism of the jihad ts well with thepartys ideological orientation, but the manner in which it hasbegun to color the partys view of international aairs owes tomore than ideology. The partys current foreign policy suggeststhat its leadership has either not yet sobered from that appar-ent victory or is nostalgic for the fecund days of the conict.

The Jamaat became involved in the Afghan war in partner-ship with the Pakistan military. Its role in the conict was en-

visioned and largely shaped by the generals, as well as by the

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positive dividends which participation in the war. In theprocess, the Zia ul-Haq regime, which oversaw the war, con-

verted the Jamaat from a largely domestic political party intoan instrument of the states foreign adventures and gave it anacute consciousness of the possibilitiesideological as well asnancial and politicalof a wider role for the party beyondPakistan. That consciousness became integral to the partysideological posture, view of its role in Pakistan, and the man-ner in which it formulates and implements its agenda. Theplace of jihad in the partys foreign policy thinking has to beunderstood in the context of the broader set of pragmatic andideological interests that govern the partys perspective.

The Islamic State Equally important to this discussion of Islamist principles isMawdudis conception of the Islamic state.27 The Islamic stateis the culmination and the raison dtre of the Islamic move-ment: a utopian ideal, a just order based on the teachings of thesharia and the rule of the prophet and his immediate successors(known as the rightly-guided caliphs, 632-61 A.D.), whichguarantees the continuity of the faith and Muslim piety. Thusthe Islamic state may seem anachronistic. Yet the Islamic state

is a model of governance that was conceived in contradistinctionto Western models and does not therefore represent a return topremodern sociopolitical organization.Although Islamist thinkers,Mawdudi prominent among them, have sought to dene theIslamic state in terms of sharia concepts and early Islamic insti-tutions, there is little doubt that what they seek to dene is aconstellation of modern organizations, performing functions as-sociated with modern states. That Mawdudi characterized theIslamic state in terms that emphasize its hybrid nature, such as atheodemocracy or a democratic caliphateusing adjectivesthat come from Western political ideals rather than from theshariaattests to this tendency. The concept of the Islamicstate is therefore a tacit acceptance of the paradigm of the na-tion-state system, and through it an acceptance of an inter-national system.


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International Human RightsMawdudi did not write prolically about human rights, and

what he did write was not until later in his career. Human rightshad not been important to conceptions of the state in the West

when Mawdudis views on politics and statecraft were formed.He only addressed the issue when the Islamic state came underattack for having authoritarian proclivities and excluding mi-norities. Mawdudis rejection of such criticisms of the Islamicstate and his attempt to question the ethical moorings of West-ern notions of human rights were perhaps predictable. What ismore interesting is what Mawdudis treatment of human rightsreveals about his universalist inclinations within a nationalframework. Mawdudi argued that non-Muslim minoritiesrights in the Islamic state would be those specied in the shariasteachings on thedhimmis(protected subjects who were follow-ers of a religion recognized by Islam), and he alluded to the Ot-toman millet system, whereby the empire was organized alongcommunal lines, to a signicant extent, as an example of how the Islamic state might work.28

Before those who criticized the division of the population of the Islamic state between Muslims and non-Muslims and thetreatment of non-Muslims as second class citizens, Mawdudi

was unapologetic. Interestingly, he did not simply assert thatsuch a division was mandated by the sharia, but justied his pre-scriptions in terms of Western conceptions of the state and therights of the citizenry in them. He argued that the Islamic state

was not dened solely by its territorial boundary; it was an ide-ological state, with Islam serving as its protector and raisondtre. Hence, preserving the purity of the states ideology wasits foremost concern,29and one that justied excluding from au-thority or from any position that could inuence the working of the state those not subscribing to its ethos (e.g., voters). 30 Headded that Western democracies and communist regimes alikehave treated their national and ideological minorities in a simi-lar fashion, although they might not admit to it. 31He deniedthat the dhimmi -Muslim dichotomy was undemocratic, sug-

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gesting to the contrary that to force the majority to abide by thedictates of the minority would be undemocratic. 32

In recent years the debate over human rights in the Islamicstate has been rekindled, now including womens rights. 33Dur-ing the Zia ul-Haq years (197788), the Womens Action Forum(WAF) opposed those aspects of Islamization that limited or re-duced womens rights. WAFs platform was premised on inter-national legal and human rights norms, and it enjoyed the sup-port of feminist movements abroad. 34 The Jamaat, whichsupported both Islamization and the Zia regime, opposed WAF and advocated what is known as the relativity of humanrightsnamely, that Muslims have their own standards of human rights and should not have to submit to Eurocentricnorms. The Jamaats position was strengthened in the 1990s

with Malaysias open defense of Asian values. 35Moreover, the Jamaat claimed that Muslim societies and Is-

lamic law provide better for women than Western societies, asevidenced by the lower incidences of rape and sexual violence inMuslim societies. 36But when WAF mobilized around the sex-ual misconduct of police toward women in custody and the po-litical uses of rape, 37 the Jamaats position proved unconvincing.

The party then fell back on the old argument that human rights

advocacy is a means of undermining Muslim culture by secular-izing and subjugating Muslim societies. 38 This attitude gov-erned its position on the Vienna conference on human rightsand the Beijing conference on women.

From 1998 to 1999, a number of incidents of human rights vi-olations against the Christian minority occurred in Karachi andrural Punjab, as well as against the Muhajir community in Sind.In these cases the Jamaat condemned the use of violence, butdefended the right of the state (vis--vis Muhajirs) and majority Muslims (vis--vis Christians) to protect their respective inter-ests. The party, moreover, rejected international condemnationof the human rights infractions as unwarranted interference inPakistans aairs and proof of the Western bias against Islam.

The foregoing has shown that Mawdudis views of interna-tional relations were a fusion of universalist and nationalist ideas.


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Given his overwhelming inuence on the movement, it is notsurprising that the Jamaats foreign policy has displayed univer-salist inclinations just as it has been grounded in Pakistaninationalism. In some ways the partys foreign policy is reminis-cent of communist foreign policy soon after the formation of theSoviet Union, when the greater interests of international com-munism were weighed against the pursuit of state and nationalinterests to strengthen the rst bastion of communism.The latter

view prevailed, conrming a pragmatic and nationalist foreignpolicy for the Soviet state, albeit couched in a universalist rubric.

the jama ats foreign policy since 1947

Foreign Policymakers The architects of the Jamaats foreign policy have varied withthe time period in question. Early in the partys history, foreignpolicy positions were espoused by Mawdudi but without any specic agenda. He simply spoke his mind or articulated thepartys position on single issues as they became important in thedomestic political scene. It was not until the 1970s that the party began to develop systematic thinking on such areas of interest

to Pakistan as Afghanistan, relations with the Persian Gulf states, Western powers, defense considerations, internationaleconomic relations, and Pakistans place in regional and inter-national alignments.

It was also in the 1970s that the younger generation of Jamaat leaders, educated in modern subjects in universities inPakistan as well as the West, assumed positions of authority.

The rise of this generation to power has generally streamlinedthe Jamaats thinking on a host of issues, one of which is foreignpolicy. The party thus moved away from reliance on its leader-ship for ad hoc responses to events, and began actively to for-mulate foreign policy, inuencing Pakistans foreign policy inthe process. To sustain and promote its international role, the

Jamaat has created new institutional arrangements. For exam-ple, the party established an international aairs bureau that has

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been coordinating the Jamaats formal relations with Islamicgroups and governments abroad. In addition, research institutesloosely aliated with the Jamaat have become a center for for-eign policymaking and for informing national leaders of the

Jamaats views. The most notable of these is the Institute of Policy Studies in Islamabad, led by Khurshid Ahmad. Amongits founding gures are Ijaz Gilani and Tahir Amin, both of

whom received doctoral degrees in political science from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.The other institution of note is the Institute of Regional Studies of Peshawar.

As Jamaat members and leaders have joined the governmentor served in the parliament, they have inevitably been forced tothink about foreign policy questions and to push the party to de-

velop a foreign policy perspective. The new institutionalarrangements serve these leaders in achieving their goals. Insum, generational change in the Jamaat has encouraged the de-

velopment of greater international thinking, and the necessary institutional arrangements vest the party with the means to doso eectively and with continuity over time.

Meanwhile, many pro-Jamaat students have been recruitedinto state institutions such as the ministries of nance and for-eign aairs that deal with foreign policy.In these institutions the

new recruits have begun to change the dominant culture leftover since the colonial era, and to push for new ways of con-ceiving of Pakistans foreign policy. The new recruits have notmanaged to fundamentally change policymaking, at least not

yet, but they present the possibility for a continued role for Is-lamism in Pakistans foreign policy. A similar beginning in 1965transformed the military; it will most likely do the same in theforeign policymaking institutions.

The Role of State PolicyAn important factor, often ignored in discussions of Islamist

views on foreign policy, is the role of state actors and policies. Itmay be a vindication of realist theories of international relationsto argue that states matter greatly in shaping Islamist attitudestoward the world order.There is no doubt that early onas it will


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become evident belowthe Pakistani state had tried to limit any role for the Jamaat in the foreign policy arena. From the mid-dle of the 1960s, however, the Pakistani state began to encour-age a role for the Jamaat in the foreign policy arena, and oftennudged it toward ideological posturing that was needed to man-age covert operations. The state also sought to regulate thepartys international rolein eect, allowing the Jamaat a say only when and where the government deemed it appropriate.

The problem here was that although the state was largely suc-cessful in controlling the Jamaats international activities, ithelped cultivate the partys appetite for foreign policy. Since thisappetite developed in the framework of pursuing Pakistans na-tional interests, it entrenched the partys national identity andparticipation in the political process and institutionalized its re-lationship with the state.

In 1965 Ayub Khan involved the Jamaat in his India policy after the failure of his military campaign for Kashmir. In 1971 thegovernment of Yahya Khan encouraged the Jamaat to lead del-egations to Europe and the Arab world to shore up support forPakistans campaign of terror in East Pakistan. 39From 1975 on-

ward, the government, rst under Zulkar Ali Bhutto and laterunder Zia, drew the Jamaat into its Afghan policy and then into

Kashmir and Central Asia. In all these cases the governmentsdomestic and international needs spurred it to bring the Jamaatinto the foreign policy arena.

Nor has the Pakistani government been the only one to in- volve the Jamaat in international issues. Saudi Arabia and laterIran managed, or at least tried, to use the Jamaat for their ownforeign policy agendas. Since the 1960s Saudi Arabia has viewedthe Jamaat as an important ally in implementing its policies vis--vis Iran in South Asia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and tosome extent even in the Arab world. It has involved the Jamaatin its international agencies, such as the Rabitah al-Alam al-Is-lami, or international educational projects, and provided directnancial support to the party. Consequently the Jamaat has de-

veloped a vested interest in particular international perspectivesthat are not necessarily in keeping with the Pakistani govern-

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ments position. This is an Islamic foreign policy that isrent-seekingat its core.The relationships that were fostered inthis fashion, however, proved to be of less inuence on the

Jamaats foreign policy than on its domestic political interests.During the Gulf War, the party served its perceived domesticinterests rather than its nancial patrons,despite some measureof internal party resistance.

Between 1993 and 1996, Prime Minister Benazir Bhuttosought to stem the Jamaats inuence on Pakistani foreignaairs by using her governments own foreign relations as ameans of marginalizing the party. During her visit to the UnitedStates in 1995,Benazir Bhutto characterized Pakistan as a mod-erate Muslim state besieged with militant fundamentalismastate deserving Western support and partnership in confrontinga common challenge. The Jamaat viewed Benazirs attempt toconstruct a new nexus between Islamabad and Washington as asurreptitious attempt to cleanse Pakistans politics of Islamicforces.40 The Jamaat newsletter,Resurgence,strongly objectedto Benazirs endorsement of the term fundamentalism todene Islamic parties in Pakistan, and the implication that the

Jamaat was an extremist party.41In the end, the governmentsuse of foreign policy postures to control domestic politics

evoked a stronger response from the Jamaat than Benazirs at-tempt at rapprochement with Washington.Since 1997, Nawaz Sharif has followed a variation of the

same policy. His government poses as a moderate Islamic alter-native that lays claim to the Jamaats constituency. This posturehas compelled the Jamaat to more clearly dene its agenda,bothdomestically and internationally, in tandem with underminingthe governments claim to Islamicity. This has pushed the party toward more radical posturing on Islamic issues and greater ac-tivism on international issues where the governments associa-tion with the United States could be exploited as a liability.

Kashmir The Jamaats rst foreign policy position was on Kashmir. Nosooner had Mawdudi arrived in Pakistan than he impressed on


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the government the importance of taking the oensive and se-curing control of strategic locations in the province.42 The

Jamaats position on Kashmir was not very dierent from whatthe majority of Pakistanis favored: the Muslim majority province should join Pakistan, and if necessary, Pakistanisshould go to war to realize that end. Mawdudi asserted thatrather than conducting a covert jihad campaign in Kashmir (asdiscussed above), Pakistan should openly declare war on Indiato ght for the province. The Pakistani government respondedby accusing the Jamaat of undermining the valiant eorts of

volunteers ghting in Kashmir. Thus Mawdudis hawkishness was overshadowed by his ostensible lack of patriotism.

More than any other factor, the political damage that the Jamaat suered from Mawdudis stance in 1948 has since deter-mined its Kashmir policy. Its policy since 1948 has been basedon its attempt to speak for Pakistani nationalism and to respondto domestic political imperatives. The partys desire tostrengthen its organization and political standing serves to ex-plain its Kashmir policy better than any ideological explanationcould. The Jamaat did not try to push the Kashmir issue intothe limelight but addressed it if and when it was debated in thepolitical arena.When the Jamaat did speak on Kashmir, it used

the occasion to underscore its delity to Pakistan and the Kash-mir cause and to try to erase the memory of its confrontation with the government. When Pakistan and India went to warover Kashmir in 1965, Mawdudi lost no time in declaring a jihad,as if to defend the logic of his argument of 1948.

In 1988, the Kashmir issue turned again into a crisis. The Jamaat,which at the time was a member of the opposition coali-tion, the Islamic Democratic Alliance ( Islami Jumhuri Ittihad ),quickly rallied for a jihad and pushed for strong governmentsupport of Kashmiri secessionist forces, breaking with the al-liance to openly support Prime Minister Benazir Bhuttos moreconfrontational positionalthough the Jamaat was generally opposed to her government.43 The Jamaats position was alsoinuenced by a number of other considerations beyond domes-tic politics. As the Afghan war (discussed below) was coming to

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a close, the Jamaat hoped that a similar jihad in Kashmir wouldhelp the party maintain the nancial and paramilitary networksthat it had already established. It also viewed jihad as useful inkeeping organizational spirits high, recruiting new workers,popularizing the Jamaat as a patriotic and heroic force, andavoiding costly organizational changes which the end of theAfghan campaign would precipitate.

Furthermore, during the Afghan war and to some extentduring the Sikh drive for independence in Indias Punjabprovince in the 1980s, the Jamaat had developed strong orga-nizational ties with the Pakistani military. In particular, theparty forged a close relationship with the Inter-Services Intel-ligence agency (ISI), which had masterminded the mujahideencampaigns against Soviet forces and was now suspected of involvement in Kashmir.The ISI,and the military establishmentgenerally, were then supportive of a tough stance on Kashmir.From the mid-1980s,several mujahideen training camps underthe Jamaats control, such al-Badr, began to train Kashmirifreedom ghters.

Another catalyzing factor for the Jamaats involvement inKashmir was the role of Kashmiri Jamaat-i Islami activists.Since1947 Kashmir has had its own Jamaat-i Islami party,independent

from but ideologically close to the Pakistani and Indian Jamaats.Kashmirs Jamaat operated some 1,000 seminaries and schoolsin the vale of Kashmir in 1988.44 The organizational and ideo-logical ties among some of the ghtersthat were fostered inseminaries and military training campsdrew the Pakistani

Jamaat into the crisis.Moreover, the Jamaat was encouraged by Indias attempt to por-

tray the uprising as a fundamentalist conspiracy master-mindedby Pakistan.This gave the party an aura of power at a time whenits electoral showings were poor. Holding the Jamaat responsi-ble for the uprising,while useful in denying sympathy to Kash-miris in the West, credited Islamism with capabilities that it didnot possess. The Jamaat was only too eager for its ideology tobe held up as a force of empowerment and liberation, capable of pinning down 200,000 Indian troops for 5 years.


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The more the Jamaats political fortunes in Pakistan havesagged, the more it has sought to use Kashmir to shore up itsposition. Since 1993, when its parliamentary representationdropped to three, its rhetoric on Kashmir has heated up. The

Jamaat has organized demonstrations, challenged the govern-ment to take action, and sought credit for guerrilla operations inKashmir. For instance, the Kashmiri guerrilla commander MastGul, who was responsible for the stando and re at the Mus-lim shrine in Charar Sharif in May 1995, toured Pakistan in thecompany of the Jamaats amir, Qazi Husain Ahmad.45 The tour

was somewhat embarrassing to the Pakistani government, which had denied any connection with the commander. Thesedays, unlike in 1948,eager to boost its nationalist credentials, the

Jamaat supports covert operations, and does not appear to bebound by Mawdudis strictures on unocial jihads.

Since 1995, however, the government has taken control of most Jamaat training camps and networks of freedom ghters,handing them over to the Deobandi Jamiat-i Ulama-i Islam(Society of Ulama of Islam, JUI) and their allies.The al-Badrcamp in Afghanistanuntil it was destroyed by U.S. missilein retaliation for the bombing of American embassies inAfricatrained the Deobandi Harakatul-Ansar (Movement

of the Ansar, renamed Harakatul-Mujahedin, or MujahedinsMovement) and Dawa wa Irshad (Propagation and Guid-ance) and its sister organization,Lashkar-i Tayyibah (Army of the Pure). The Jamaats inuence on operations in Kashmirhas thus waned considerably.

Although no longer the front Islamist organization in man-aging militants in Kashmir, the Jamaat strongly supports Is-lamist activism there. In July 1999 the party spearheaded the Is-lamist opposition to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif s decision to

withdraw support from militants that had inltrated the borderat Kargil. The Jamaats demonstration drew 30,000 and madeit dicult for Nawaz Sharif to contend with the political falloutof his decision.The Jamaats actions here been motivated by itscommitment to the Islamist war of liberation in Kashmir, as wellas by the desire to remain relevant to the conict.The party also

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hopes to use the crisis to mobilize support for itself and deny itto the government.

other regional issues

India To date, the Jamaat-i Islami has not formulated a particular out-look on Pakistans regional interests and policy options. Theparty has always echoed the general anti-Indian sentiments of Pakistanis, although it has not been generally preoccupied withIndia, nor made pronouncements any more militant than thoseof other parties or social forces.On occasion, it has adopted dis-tinctive postures, such as its opposition to cultural relations be-tween India and Pakistan in the belief that the ow of Indianlms or music into Pakistan will corrupt its Islamic orientation.Since the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya and the rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP to power, however, the Jamaat hasbecome more concerned with India, and has sought to more di-rectly inuence Pakistans India policy.It has also sought to gainpolitically from Pakistanis apprehensions about India. Hence,the party strongly opposed talks between Prime Minister

Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterparts, I.K. Gujral of Indiain 1997 and A.B. Vajpayee during the Lahore summit of 1999. The Jamaat orchestrated street demonstrations and clashes tooppose Vajpayees visit,and the promised normalization of tradeand diplomatic relations between the India and Pakistan thatcame out of the Lahore summit.The clashes led to the arrest of a number of Jamaat activists. Subsequently, the Jamaat esca-lated its attacks on Nawaz Sharif, and declared that, the gov-ernment has gone berserk.

The partys views on relations with India also owe to the re-lations of its leaders and rank and le members with India.Many in the Jamaat are migrants(muhajirs) who came to Pakistan atthe time of the partition, and like millions of other Pakistanis of the same origin, they are highly indophobic. The Jamaats close


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political ties with the Muhajir community in Sind has added in-centive for the party to follow a hardline policy on India.

Finally,through its position on Pakistans relation with Indiathe Jamaat has sought to capitalize on public anger at Indias de-cision to test its nuclear capability in 1998. The Jamaat has al-

ways strongly supported Pakistans nuclear program. Over thecourse of the past two years it has become more ardent in its sup-port. After India tested its weapons in 1998, there was consider-able international pressure put on Pakistan not to follow suit.

The Jamaat was at the forefront of domestic pressure on Nawaz Sharif to carry out nuclear tests of its own in response to Indianmoves. The party so strongly urged the government in this re-gard that many in Pakistan joked that perhaps Pakistans nuclear

weapons were kept at Jamaat headquarters in Lahore. The Jamaat has since 1998 opposed the signing of the Comprehen-sive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and threatened the government

with public uprisings if it were to do so. The Jamaat was no doubt impressed by the extent to which

the religious nationalist ruling party of India at the time, the BJP,gained popularity from carrying out nuclear tests. The Jamaatalso believes that its strong support for Pakistans nuclear pro-gram will give it nationalist credentials and strengthen it before

the ruling order. As a result, the party has developed a coherentposition on the nuclear question owing to the importance of theissue to the partys interests in the domestic political arena.

BangladeshBangladesh presents a more complex picture. The Jamaat wasopposed to the secession of east Pakistan, and actively partici-pated in the brutal military campaign to crush Bengali nation-alism between 1969 and 1971. Once Bangladesh was created,many Jamaat workers and leaders were executed or incarceratedby the Mujibur Rahman government.Many left Bangladesh forPakistan, while others stayed to form the Jamaat-i Islami of Bangladesh. From 1971 to 1974, the Pakistani Jamaat-i Islamispearheaded the opposition to recognition of Bangladesh (theBangladesh Namanzur campaign). The party argued that the

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government should not ocially recognize the dismembermentof Pakistan along ethnic lines, as Muslim unity should supersedePakistani and Bengali identitiesthat is,umma above nation.

The Jamaat was also eager to undermine Zulkar Ali Bhuttosgovernment, which it viewed as responsible for the civil war. By opposing Bhuttos initiative to recognize Bangladesh (to whichhe had agreed in his meeting with Indira Gandhi at the Simlaconference in 1972), the Jamaat hoped to convince Pakistanisthat Bhutto had sold out their national interests to India, and

was only too happy to wash his hands of East Pakistanproof of his culpability in the disaster.Hence, the partys panIslamiczeal had a domestic political motivation behind it.

Since both Pakistan and Bangladesh pursued Islamizationunder military regimes in the 1980s, the Jamaat welcomed closerties between the two countries and lauded General Ershads Is-lamization of Bangladesh. In this, the Pakistani Jamaat was nodoubt inuenced by its sister party in Bangladesh.As a result, thecommitment of the Bangladesh state to Islamization combined

with the desire to help the Jamaat-i Islami of Bangladesh led the Jamaat to change its posture toward that country.This change of posture was also made possible by the fact that the anti-Bangladesh posture provided no political gains to the party, and

in the drive to contain India, Bangladesh was an obvious ally. Afghanistan The most important regional question for the Jamaat, how-ever, has been Afghanistan. It was not until the late 1970s thatthe Jamaat put forward an Afghan policy, since the party hadno notable presence in provinces bordering on Afghanistanduring the 194771 period and it viewed Afghanistan as lessimportant than other foreign policy concerns. Between 1947 and 1977, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan wereconfrontational as the two disputed over borders,and Afghans

were suspected of promoting Pathan nationalism in PakistansBaluchistan and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). The

Jamaat strongly opposed any form of local nationalism that


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would threaten the unity of Pakistan, as it had in the case of Bengali nationalism in east Pakistan.

The Jamaat became more interested in Afghanistan in the1970s as the party developed a base of support in NWFP. In ad-dition,with the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan in 1974 to theDaud Khan regimewhich was avowedly Pathan nationalist,and was irredentist vis--vis Pakistanthe Pakistani governmentbegan to solicit the Jamaats support in managing the rising ten-sions on its border with Afghanistan. As a player in NWFP pol-itics emphasizing Islamic unity and Pakistaniness over parochialnationalisms, the Jamaat was an important potential ally for thecentral government. Just as Daud supported Pathan nationalistsin Pakistan,Pakistan began to train and encourage Islamist resis-tance to Dauds secular government. The Jamaat was key in thedevelopment of links with Afghan Islamist movements, such asGulbedin Hekmatyars Hizb-i Islami (Islamic Party).

Soon after Daud Khan took power, the Bhutto governmentinvited Qazi Husain Ahmad, then a Jamaat leader in NWFP, tohelp formulate Pakistans Afghan policy.46 The Jamaats in-

volvement only increased with the communist takeover of Afghanistan. Following Nur Muhammad Tarakis coup in 1977,Generals Zia ul-Haq and Fazl-i Haq met with Mawdudi, Mian

Tufayl Muhammad (amir at the time), and Qazi Husain Ahmadto explore ways for the Jamaat to help with Pakistans Afghanpolicy.47 The party was important not only in managing the Is-lamist uprising in Afghanistan, but also in giving Zias regimemoral legitimacy by characterizing the Afghan war as a jihad.

The Jamaats role in the war is not easily dened. The party played a limited part in strategic decisions or operations andmanaged only a portion of the logistical or humanitarian eorts.Its main contribution was symbolic, designed to give credenceto the notion of jihad. Involvement in the war, however, had aprofound impact on the Jamaat. First, it brought the party intoPakistans foreign policymaking process, which taught party leaders much about foreign policymaking and forced them todevelop regional and global perspectives. In short, it trans-formed abstract and inchoate foreign policy notions into con-

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crete foreign policy thinking.Second, the war created organiza-tional linkages between the Jamaat and Pakistani and SaudiArabian military and intelligence units. Aside from the benetof military training, these contacts have been important to theparty politically. Third, the Jamaat beneted from the warnancially as it managed humanitarian and military aid. Finally,

with the tacit support of the government, the Jamaat was put incharge of managing the refugee population.This strengthenedthe partys base of power in NWFP, as it used its humanitarianeorts and control of aid disbursements to recruit supportamong refugees, many of whom were Pathans and hence indis-tinguishable from inhabitants of NWFP during elections.48

The Jamaat took the Afghan jihad seriously. Many party workers became involved in various aspects of the eort, andstudent supporters in particular went into the battleeld. Be-tween 1980 and 1990, some 72 pro-Jamaat students were killedghting in Afghanistan, some of whom were the sons of high-ranking Jamaat ocials.The commitment was so strong that theAfghan model, a jihad of liberation, subsequently dominatedthe Jamaats thinking,a fact which is clearly reected in their re-sponse to the current crisis in Kashmir.49 Overlooking thesignicance of the American and Pakistani governments in the

war, the party came to view the collapse of the Soviet-backedgovernment in Kabulthe rst time a rollback of communismhad been achievedas a victory for Islam and proof of the po-litical and military power of an Islamically inspired struggle. It isalso likely that the Jamaat viewed Afghanistan as the most viableplace for an Islamic state, after which Pakistan would follow suit.For these reasons, the Jamaat looked at the jihad as more than aforeign policy venture.

Since 1988 the party has sought to duplicate the success of the Afghan scene in other cases. In this the Jamaat has not beenalone; Islamist activists from Algeria to Egypt, Saudi Arabia toCentral and southeast Asia, and freedom ghters in Chechnya,Kashmir, and the Philippines have also sought to emulate theAfghan formulaorganizing and waging political and guerrillacampaigns as jihads.


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The Jamaat continued to play a role in Pakistans Afghan pol-icy, at least until 1993. Qazi Husain Ahmads close ties to Gul-buddin Hekmatyar were deemed important by the Pakistanileadership in subsuming Pathan nationalism under an Islamicbanner.This would thwart attention from the old lines of conictbetween the two countries and focus attention on ideologicalcommonalities favoring a role for Pakistan in Afghanistan. Theties have also enabled Pakistans continued management of theconict. For instance, in early 1996, Qazi Husain Ahmad forgedthe agreement between Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the power-ful mujahideen commander and minister of defense in the rstpost-Soviet government in Kabul, Ahmad Shah Masood. Thedeal installed Hekmatyar as prime minister of Afghanistan priorto the Talibans takeover of Kabul. 50

In recent years, the Jamaats role in Afghanistan has beengreatly diminished as the Taliban, who are Pathans and are tiedto the Deobandi JUI,have replaced the Qazi-Hekmatyar nexus.

The JUI became more important on the Afghan scene after1993, when it entered into an alliance with the government of Prime Minister Bhutto. The Jamaat, in contrast, had no links

with that government. In addition, the alliance between Hek-matyar and Tajiks (that was brokered by Qazi Husain)

prompted Pakistans Pathan elite into action. Pathan military commanders in the military and the ISI, in cooperation withBenazirs Pathan minister of interiorGeneral NasirullahBaburconspired to ensure Pathan rule over Afghanistan. Inorder to achieve this they undermined Hekmatyar and his al-liance with the Masood/Burhanuddin Rabbani faction (and the

Jamaat), and looked to a new Pathan force (the Taliban). The Jamaat was thus sidelined in the Afghan scene, and was re-placed by JUI, which had close ties with the Taliban.The Qazi-Hekmatyar nexus was replaced by one between JUIs MawlanaFazlur Rahman and Talibans Mulla Umar as Pakistan militarysinstrument for controlling Afghanistan.

The rise of the Taliban quickly inuenced Pakistans pol-itics. The movements meteoric rise in Afghanistan createdmuch enthusiasm for it in Islamist circles in Pakistan, and

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given Talibans connections with the Deobandi establish-ment in Pakistan, created a Talibanization of Pakistan. Asa result, Islamist forces became more strident in theirrhetoric, and grew more jihadist and revolutionary. Thechange of scene in Pakistan forced the Jamaat to adopt amore revolutionary posture in order to protect its position inIslamist circles. The party became more anti-American, andopenly called for jihad against the government. 51Althoughthe Jamaats call to action and anti-Western posturing aremore sophisticated than the rhetoric of JUI and its o-shoots, and although the partys focus on key policy positionssuch as relations with IMF or signing the CTBT, they stillput forward an uncompromising and belligerent front. Thisshift in posture owes to the radicalization of the Jamaatsconstituency and primary milieu of operation after the ascentof the Taliban in Afghanistan.

the greater muslim world and muslim issues

Conceiving of Jamaats Role in the Muslim World Throughout his life, Mawdudi strove for wide recognition as

a Muslim thinker and leader. In particular, he traveled in theArab world, meeting religious leaders and thinkers to cultivatesupport for his ideas. In certain cases, as in Saudi Arabia, thegovernment aorded him recognition. Both King Saud andKing Faysal invited him to the Kingdom, provided supportfor the Jamaat, and on one occasion, at Mawdudis behest,awarded Pakistan the contract to weave the ceremonial clothcovering the Kabah, the shrine in Mecca that is the focalpoint of the annual pilgrimage. Mawdudi served as a trusteeof the Medina University, and in 1979 he was awarded theprestigious King Faisal award for his services to Islam. Maw-dudi sought links with the Arab world not only to make his

work available to Muslims there, but to earn legitimacy by association with the central lands of Islam and the Arabicliterary canon.


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The Andalus Syndrome In addition to Mawdudis personal ambitions, the Jamaats re-lationship with the rest of the Muslim world has been condi-tioned by the notion that Islam is in danger. Among SouthAsian Muslims this sentiment is particularly strong, and hasmore than symbolic importance.The marginalization of IndianMuslims, and the occlusion of their power in their traditionalcenters of politics, arts and culture, including Lucknow, Delhi,and Hyderabad, has anchored their religious-political thinkingin the fear of marginalization and disappearance. The scholarAkbar S.Ahmed has argued that South Asian Muslims are very much aicted by what he terms the Andalus syndrome, or fearof a Moorish fate. 52It is interesting to note that whereas acrossthe Arab world the 500th anniversary of Muslim expulsion fromSpain went largely unnoticed, in India and Pakistan it wasmarked by a series of publications. 53

Deeply aected by the fall of the Muslim princely state of Hyderabad, Mawdudi was particularly prone to the Andalussyndrome. In fact, he drew parallels between Hyderabad andAndalusia on a number of occasions. 54 This concern also guidedthe Jamaats approach to the East Pakistan debacle. In atelegram to Shaykh Mujibur Rahman in March 1971, Mawdudi

warned him against precipitating a crisis that would be greaterthan the tragedy of Islamic Spain. 55 The Jamaats position onevents in Kashmir, Bosnia, or India since the Ayodhya incidenthave also been guided by the fear of extinction of Islam. Like-

wise, the popular pro-Jamaat weekly Takbir has covered the up-rising in Kashmir since 1988, the plight of Muslims in Bosnia,and the Hindu nationalist onslaught against Muslims in India

within the same framework of analysis. Even some secular par-ties, like the ethnic Muhajir National Movement (MQM),haveused the Andalus Syndrome as a political tool.

Advocacy of Muslim Causes The Jamaats ties to the Muslim world have been alternately strengthened and weakened by its advocacy on behalf of Mus-lim activists abroad. In the role of advocate, the party has long

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been critical of secular regimes in the Muslim world and theirtreatment of the Islamic opposition. In 1963 during a trip toMecca, Mawdudi met with Ayatollah Khomeini; 56shortly there-after,Tarjumanul-Quran, the Jamaats ocial journal, publishedan article that severely criticized the shahs regime and its secu-larizing policies. 57 Mawdudi was subsequently imprisoned forsabotaging Pakistans foreign policy. Throughout the 1950s and1960s, the Jamaat (encouraged by Saudi Arabia) criticizedNassers treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Inlater years, the party became even more vocal in advocating thecause of Islamist opposition groups from Algeria to Tajikistan.

The Jamaats newsletter,Resurgence,has beenquite prolic,pro- viding Islamist interpretations of events in various Muslimcountries.The Jamaats Idarah-i Maarif-i Islami (Islamic Stud-ies Bureau) has been active in translating works of Islamist lead-ers and accounts of their struggles in the Philippines, Palestine,Algeria, Turkey, Chechnya, and the Arab Near East. In addi-tion, the Idarah now publishes annual reports on the status of the Muslim world which cover the activities of Islamist move-ments. 58 Finally, the Jamaat augments the Idarahs publishedmaterial with an array of video and cassette recordings on thesame topics, and more recently, use of the internet.

The greater prominence of Islamist activism across the Mus-lim world has created within Pakistan and the Jamaat a con-sciousness about the importance and relevance of internationalevents. In recent years the Jamaats international relations ocehas grown in size and prominence, partly because the Jamaatsleadership has been more mobile.The amir of the Jamaat, QaziHusain Ahmad, is now viewed as a national politician.In this ca-pacity he routinely travels abroad,and in Pakistan meets with vis-iting foreign ocials and foreign ambassadors on a regular basis.Others, like Khurshid Ahmad (one of the partys leaders who isa noted Islamist ideologue of international renown in his ownright), travel across the Muslim world and to the West or work at institutions such as the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, Eng-land, or the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur.Such exposure has increased the partys consciousness about


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global issues.The Saudi and Malaysian sponsorship of interna-tional Islamic conferences, transnational agencies, and institu-tions has had a similar eect.Even within Pakistan, the increasedparticipation of Jamaat members in parliament and the govern-ment since 1977 has exposed them to foreign policymaking andthe importance and complexities of international relations.

The greater international consciousness of the Jamaat and itscontacts across the Muslim world and in the West have given itan international reach that is unique to Islamist movements.The

Jamaats organizational and intellectual networks extend beyondSouth Asia.The party has a strong presence in Central Asia andis closely tied to Islamist forces in the Southeast Asia, the Mid-dle East, and north and sub-Saharan Africa. It also has a strongorganizational presence in Europe and North America.Only theMuslim Brotherhood can boost of a similar transnational reach.Still, the Brotherhoods network is not as expansive. Within theMuslim world it is limited to Arab countries; and in the West itspresence is not as strong as that of the Jamaat. Moreover, theBrotherhood has not operated as an international network in themanner that the Jamaat hastying various domestic, regionaland international concerns into integrated and singular policy objectives, and mobilizing international resources to realize

them. The Jamaats international reach and perspecti

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