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Making a Sovereign State: Javed Ghamidi and ‘Enlightened Moderation’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Sadaf Aziz*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law and Social Policy, Lahore University of Management and Sciences, Opposite Sector U, Defence, Lahore, Pakistan 54792 Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper takes a critical look at a recent attempt by the Pakistani state to manage religious thought and practice, under the broad banner of ‘Enlightened Moderation’. One of the key Islamic thinkers associated in popular imagination with this project is Javed Ahmed Ghamidi. In contextualizing the work and role of Ghamidi, it is tempting to work backwards from his opinions on Islamic truth to situate him as a reformer whose interventions are primarily oriented to the task of reconciling Islam to conditions of liberal modernity. Against such a tendency it is argued here that such an exercise of classification and categorization needs to be undertaken with greater care as against a critique of the imperialist typology of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Islams, a project of delineating authentic from inauthentic Islams has also more recently been activated.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I have benefited greatly from a chance to present this paper at the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge University, as well as at the South Asia Institute and the Rappaport Centre for Human Rights, University of Texas, Austin. I'd like to thank Humeira Iqtidar in particular for her help and patience in the completion of this paper. Additionally, David Gilmartin, Eleanor Newbigin, Kyla Pasha and Sarah Suhail all took the time and effort to read and comment upon earlier drafts for which I am grateful.

References

1 Mahmood, S. (2006) Secularism, Hermeneutics and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation Public Culture 18:2, 323345; 326CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Musharraf, P. A., Plea for Enlightened Moderation 1 June 2004, Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5081–2004May31.html; [accessed 9 February 2011]. and Musharraf, P. A., ‘Islam and West: Time for enlightened moderation’, 2 June 2004, http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=editorial&xfile=data/editorial/2004/june/editorial_june5.xml [accessed 9 February 2011].

3 ‘Pakistan president says Enlightened Moderation is not Westernization’, BBC Monitoring South Asia—Political, 23 March 2005. The report of Musharraf's speech delivered at his official residence on the occasion of Pakistan Day resituated the domain of culture and the arts as the bearers of a tradition that was already both enlightened and moderate. However, there was increasing suspicion that the US was funding some of the Enlightened Moderation Programme. Amongst the evidence which emerged to validate this suspicion, the direct funding for curricular reform was highlighted in a rather bizarre manner: See ‘Pakistan censors poetic Salute to Bush’ The Telegraph, 5 December 2005: ‘A poem in a school textbook has been removed by embarrassed education officials in Pakistan after it was found that the first letters of each line spelt out “President George W. Bush”’.

4 Mufti, S. The Fundamentalist Moderate, The Boston Globe, 22 July 2007.

5 These claims are often bolstered by references to a lineage of moderate observance as defining the character of sub-continental Islam that predates the incursion and rapid spread of essentially foreign influences such as of Wahabism and Salafism.

6 The programme broadly comprises the foreign policy implications of the International Religious Freedoms Act 1998, as well as the establishment of the The Muslim World Outreach Policy Coordinating Committee by the National Security Council in 2004. Funds earmarked for ‘public diplomacy spending’ in 2005 around the programme are $1.26 billion. See Kaplan, D. (2005), ‘Hearts, Minds and Dollars’, US News and World Report http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050425/25roots_print.htm [accessed 9 February 2011]; and Ottoway, M. (2005), ‘Islamists and Democracy Keep the Faith’, The New Republic at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=17037 [accessed 9 February 2011].

7 Asad, T. (2007) ‘Secularism, hegemony, and fullness’. The Immanent Frame. Available at: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2007/11/17/secularism-hegemony-and-fullness [accessed 9 February 2011].

8 Asad, T. (2003), ‘Formations of the Secular’, Stanford University Press, p. 193.

9 ibid p. 201.

10 Mahmood, S. Secularism, Hegemony and Empire, general description on pp. 330–335, quote from p. 328.

11 Ibid. 328.

12 In her formal alignment of the Muslim World Order programme and the work of Islamic reformers, Mahmood has indicated a set of methodological and epistemological assumptions as being shared between them. Particularly, she has suggested that a historicist, empiricist method for reading religious texts is oriented to the creation of a secular subject. This subject would then be capable of critically separating the historical conditions within which the text was revealed from the universal truths to be gleaned from its broader ethical structuration. Furthermore, in displacing both traditional method and authoritative guidance of the Ulema, space is opened up for individuals to make choices in matters of religious observance which thereby fractures the integral wholeness of Islamic practice and faith. Amongst the scholars that Mahmood identifies as being projected as part of an imperial foreign policy are Hassan Hanafi, Abdul-Karim Soroush and Nasir Hamid Abu Zayd. She cites the work of Charles Hirsckind as the inspiration for her discussion of Zayd. See Hirschkind, C., (1995), Heresy or Hermeneutics: The Case of Nasir Hamid Abu Zayd, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:4, 463477Google Scholar.

13 Mahmood S., Secularism, Hermeneutics, Empire pp. 333–334.

14 See particularly Bernard, C., (2003), Civil Democratic Islam; Partners, Resources and Strategies Rand Corporation, available online at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1716.html [accessed 28 March 2011].

15 See Malick, Jamal, (1995). Colonization of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan Lahore: Vanguard BooksGoogle Scholar; and Ayesha, Jalal, (2000), Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850, New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar.

16 Reus-Smit, C., (2001), Human Rights and the Social Construction of Sovereignty, Review of International Studies, 27:4, 519538CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Grundnorm’ is a term used by Hans Kelsen to describe the highest ethico-moral postulate which gives rise to a system of law.

17 Reisman, W. M., (199), ‘Sovereignty and Human Rights in Contemporary International Law’, The American Journal of International Law Vol. 84 No. 4 pp. 866–876, provides a concise overview of the ways in which sovereign order through Hobbes and Bodin and then the framers of the US Constitution with the latter's reliance upon Montesquieu, Locke and Rousseau, reflect alterations in conceptions of sovereignty from a preoccupation with the establishment of internal order to the notions of popular sovereignty. While the discussion above is a sparse heuristic which cannot do justice to either the historical manifestations of sovereign order nor the vast body of literature which investigates its varied manifestations and their interplay with political or legal institutions, it is broadly informed by works such as Held, D., (2002), ‘Law of States, Law of Peoples: Three Models of Sovereignty’, Legal Theory, 8, pp. 144CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krasner, S. D., (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Robert H., Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge University Press, 1990Google Scholar.

18 For a recent discussion of ‘the transformation of international order in the 20’th Century’ describing the shift from one in which states are treated as equals to one in which ‘distinctions are drawn between states on their conformity to certain models of good government or their alignment with particular political projects’, see Simpson, G., (2007), Law War and Crime, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 142Google Scholar. For a critical discussion of the ‘political project’ of Human Rights as First world interventionism and as contributive to the disciplining of post-colonial states, see Baxi, U., (2002), The Future of Human Rights, Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar.

19 Reus-Smit C., (2001), Human Rights, p. 420.

20 For a concise articulation of the manner in which the events post-9/11 mark a new global configuration of politics going to the articulation of the global with the local, the disciplining of ‘so-called rogue states, social movements and social formations’, see, Mufti, A., (2003), Reading Jacques Ranciere's ‘Ten Theses on Politics’: ‘After September 11th’, Theory & Event, 6:4. Ackerman, B., (2006), Before the Next Attack, New Haven: Yale University PressGoogle Scholar; Sassen, S., (2005), ‘Beyond Flawed Elections: Toward a Privatized Presidency’, Theory & Event, 8:2Google Scholar; Sassen, S., (2007), Territory, Authority, and Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton: Princeton University PressGoogle Scholar; and Asad, T., (2007), On Suicide Bombings, New York: Columbia University PressGoogle Scholar. Both Sassen and Asad suggest that the unaccountable practices of the US Executive, particularly as represented by the Patriot Act, are reflective of systemic trends associated with liberal governance. Against a large body of work which also sees this as an instance of sovereign exceptionalism, Ackerman makes a case for the restorative work that can be done within a ‘rule of law’ paradigm.

21 The broad definitional ambit and the indefinite incarceration of ‘enemy combatants’, coercive interrogation techniques, trial by military tribunals, extra-ordinary rendition and targeted killings are amongst the practices allegedly contravening international humanitarian laws by the US in waging the War on Terror. Nanda, V. P., (2009), ‘The War on Terror and Its Implications for International Law & Policy’, Denver Journal of Int'l Law & Policy 37. P. 513. See also Churchill, W., (2006), ‘A Not So Friendly Fascism? Political Prisons and Prisoners in the United States’ The New Centennial Review 6.1, pp. 1–54. Although the Obama administration has stopped invoking the term ‘war on terror’, the underlying package of such practices in the ‘war against al Qaeda and its affiliates’ has not altered significantly. Pleming, S., ‘Obama Team Drops “War on Terror” Rhetoric’ Reuters, 31 March 2009 available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/30/us-obama-rhetoric-idUSTRE52T7MH20090330 [accessed 9 February 2011].

22 ‘The Bush Doctrine’ became the nickname for a document entitled, ‘National Security Strategy for the United States’ released by the White House in 2002. It is broadly associated with outlining a future course of military security that would include the option of ‘pre-emptive strike’: ‘The U.S. national security strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests. The aim of this strategy is to help make the world not just safer but better. Our goals on the path to progress are clear: political and economic freedom, peaceful relations with other states, and respect for human dignity.’ p. viii available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html [accessed 28 March 2011]. See also, Mgbeoji, I., (2006), ‘The Civilised Self and the Barbaric Other: Imperial Delusions of Order and the Challenges of Human Security’, Third World Quarterly, 27:5, 855869CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 The text of this collaborative statement can be viewed at: http://www.foreignaffairscommittee.org/includes/content_files/ENLIGHTENED%20MODERATION.pdf [accessed 9 February 2011]. Additionally, for an extensive interview with Mushahid Hussain, who Chaired the Organization of Islamic Countries meeting, see Mateen, A., ‘Politics of Piety’ Dawn Magazine, 5 September. Hussain is quoted as saying: ‘That “soft” face of the real Pakistan is seldom projected, and frankly, it's one of the state's biggest failures, because we have failed to apply our minds to evolve a comprehensive strategy on this count.’ He also establishes the transnational and transhistorical dimensions of a moderate Islam by reference to Granada and Cordoba and suggests that Islam was a ‘beacon of modernity, moderation and enlightenment when Europe was going through the Dark Ages’ as further evidence of the later enervation of its vital capacities.

24 See Nasr, V., (2004), ‘Military Rule, Islamism and Democracy in Pakistan’, Middle East Journal, 58:2, 195209CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ‘He had spent some of his youth in Turkey, and had an admiration for Kemal Ataturk, and also looks positively on the role that the military plays in Turkey's politics—which is clearly at odds with how the military has seen its own role in Pakistan’, p. 204. ‘The combination of Kemalism and military rule differs greatly from Zia's formula of combining Islamism with military rule’, p. 201.

25 Zafar Ali Shah v Pervez Musharraf (PLD 2000 SC 869) validated the coup on the grounds of the doctrine of state necessity. The court granted virtually unlimited powers to the military regime, including the power to amend the constitution so long as its salient features—parliamentary form of government, federalism and the independence of the judiciary—were left intact. The court, however, imposed one meaningful restriction: the military regime had to hold general elections for the national parliament and provincial legislatures no later than three years from the date of the coup. Thus, elections were held in the condition of leaders of the two major parties being currently in exile.

26 Two executive ordinances were promulgated to control the madrassas. Pakistan Madrassah Education (Establishment and Affliation of Mode Dini Madaris) Board Ordinance 2001 and the Voluntary Registration and regulation Ordinance 2002. However, ‘only one-tenth of the madrassas, agreed to be registered and the rest simply ignored the statute’. Rahman, Tariq, Madrassas: Religion, Poverty and the Potential for Violence in Pakistan, National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Islamabad: http://www.tariqrahman.net/educa/Madrassas%20in%20Pakistan.htm [accessed 9 February 2011]. Also, see International Crisis Group, ‘Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism and the Military’, Islamabad/Brussels: 29 July 2002.

27 Wirsing, R. S., (2004), ‘Religion, Radicalism, and Security in South Asia’ in Limay, S. P., Malik, M. and Wirsing, R. (eds), Religious Radicalism and Security in Pakistan, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies: University of Honolulu, p. 10. See also, ‘“Talibanization” fears in Pakistan’, Christian Science Monitor, 13 April 2005; and Asdar Ali, K., (2004), ‘The Pakistani Islamists Gamble on the General, Middle East Report, No. 231 pp. 2–7. In a critical reading of the elections, Asdar suggests, ‘In Pakistan, Islamic parties have emerged as national players when the ruling elite engages in undemocratic practices’.

28 Mahmood, S. and Hirschkind, C., (2002), ‘Feminism, the Taliban and Politics of Counter Insurgency’, Anthropological Quarterly, 75:2339354Google Scholar.

29 Roy, O. and AbouZahab, M. Zahab, M., (2004), Islamist Networks. The Afghan-Pakistan Network, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 61, 73Google Scholar. Also see Talbot, Ian, (2003), ‘Pakistan in 2002: Democracy, Terrorism, and Brinkmanship’, Asian Survey, 43:1, 198207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 This targeting also coincided with a notable ethnic dimension to the popular protests staged against US involvement in Afghanistan. See Roy and Abou Zahab, Islamist Networks, p. 61. Stereotypes about Pathan viciousness and their fierce independence have often been related to either the geography of the land or the notion of a primeval attachment to tribal code and custom. Spain, J. W., ‘The Pathan Borderlands’, Middle East Journal, 15:2 (Spring, 1961), 165177Google Scholar. For a general description of the legal regimes of the North West Frontier Provinces, Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), see SardarAli, S. Ali, S. and Arif, K., (2004), Traditional/Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Pakistan, in Yasin, M. and Banuri, T. (eds), The Dispensation of Justice in Pakistan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 115150Google Scholar. For a critical discussion of the stereotypes about Pathan character and customary governance structures see Banerjee, M., (2004), The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition & Memory in the North West Frontier, Karachi: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar.

31 ‘Jails, Prisoners and “disappearances”, HRCP State of Human Rights in 2007’, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Report can be viewed at http://www.hrcp-web.org/pdf/Archives%20Reports/AR2007.pdf [accessed 28 March 2011].

32 While it was the looming peril of an Al-Qaeda type of Jihadism that suggested the greatest danger, the Muslim World Outreach agenda, as formulated through policy reports and the catalogue of existing schools of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, was undertaken in spite of the acknowledgement that, ‘The radical fundamentalists, the second strand, are much less concerned with the literal substance of Islam, with which they take considerable liberties either deliberately or because of ignorance of orthodox Islamic doctrine. They usually do not have any “institutional” religious affiliations but tend to be eclectic and autodidactic in their knowledge of Islam. Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Hizbut-Tahrir, and a large number of other Islamic radical movements and diffuse groups worldwide belong to this category’. Bernard, C., Civil Democratic Islam, p. 4.

33 The flirtation with the recognition of Israel was perhaps a more substantive element of such a package of diplomatic exchange.

34 Amir, A., ‘The Meaning of Enlightened Moderation’, Dawn, 4 March 2005. Challengers to the states sovereign imperative sometimes included figures such as Mukhtara Mai. In a strange inversion of initial support, the whole apparatus of the state conspired in 2006 to bar this woman's exit from the country in fear that further publicity about the gang rape that she suffered through a tribal judicial verdict would compromise the soft image of Pakistan that was being so ardently cultivated in the West. Instances such as these resulted in great disparagement of the enlightened moderation agenda amongst liberals in the country. A recasting of the title to read ‘moderate enlightenment’ was increasingly used to decry the government for not going far enough to disengage religion and politics or in affirming basic human rights as the guarantee of citizenship.

35 Musharraf, in his book, In the Line of Fire, would later reveal that the initial support for the war on terror had been coerced under threat of ‘being bombed into the stone age’ if there was resistance. For a broader discussion about the manner in which the US was simultaneously reterritorializing its war on terror even as it continued to discuss its greater enemy in the terms of ‘networks’. See Elden, S., (2007), ‘Terror and Territory’, Antipode, 39:5, 821845CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the pretext of an insufficient exercise of sovereign control in safeguarding its territory against use by terrorist networks, the US had invoked the ‘legitimate’ use of force and in some convolutions, the doctrine of just war for its invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hajjar, L., International Humanitarian Law and ‘Wars on Terror’: A Comparative Analysis of Israeli and American Doctrines and Policies, Journal of Palestine Studies, 36:12142CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hajjar recapitulates the argument that the US's justification for relaxation of the laws of war and international humanitarian law during the Afghanistan war was the assertion that the latter was a ‘failed state’. As early as 2002 Pakistan specialists and other foreign policy experts were suggesting that Pakistan was an unreliable ally. See particularly, articles from the Washington Post by Jim Hoagland ‘Pakistan: Pretence of an Ally’ 28 March 2002, and ‘Pakistan: Nuclear Enabler’, 24 October 2002. Pakistan was also having to control against threat of ‘hot pursuit’ even as there were ongoing ‘targeted bombings’ on Pakistani territory by the US through satellite guided drones and at least one reported incursion by US ground troops onto Pakistani territory on 12 September 2008 which resulted in the death of 12 civilians. On the international legal implication of such US actions see Shah, S. A., (2009), ‘War on Terrorism: Self Defense, Operation Enduring Freedom and the Legality of U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan’, Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 9:1Google Scholar.

36 Rizvi, I. and Abbas, S., (2003), ‘Use of the Media to Combat Social Exclusion & its Potential Role in Promoting Pro-Poor Social Change’, in Hooper, E. and Hamid, A. I., Scoping Study on Social Exclusion, Volume II, Report (DFID), UK. The greater reach of television media compared with print media is apparent in the figures given: 75 per cent of urban dwellers have access to television media whereas only 31 per cent read newspapers. According to a Gallup poll cited, there are over 43 million television viewers in Pakistan. P. 80.

37 Prior to this a few private news channels in particular had begun telecasting remotely and escaped the vigilance of state regulatory agencies.

38 Rizvi and Abbas ‘Use of the Media’ also point out the ways in which the Musharraf regime actively promoted its proposed alterations in local governance structures through the establishment of media cells in the relevant agencies and active participation in televised debates. Interestingly, both the instances of governance and legal reform of Islamic laws are a counter to the manner in which pre-packaged reforms intended to liberalize and privatize the economy were enacted. For example, as the headings betray, the following were enacted as executive ordinances without even legislative debate or assent: Competition Commission Ordinance 2007, Privatization Commission Ordinance 2000, Board of Investment Ordinance 2001, Foreign Currency Accounts (Protection) Ordinance 2001, Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards Ordinance 2007, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance 2002.

39 Masud, M. K., (2007), Rethinking Sharia: Javed Ahmed Ghamidi on Hudud in Die Welt des Islams 47:3–4, 356375CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The short biography in this paper, as well as the discussion of Ghamidi's interpretive method are very much indebted to Masud's comprehensive work. Additionally, Masud's article lays out the problematic assumption of the assumed binarism between Western and Islamic thought and their associations with dynamism and stagnation respectively, and calls for greater attention to be paid to the work of Muslim intellectuals.

40 Nasr, V. R., (1996), Maududi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, Oxford University Press, 1996Google Scholar. Ayub was the most anti-Islamist of the countries rulers but nonetheless the content of Islahi's disagreement was that Maudoodi, in his support for Jinnah was acting contrary to his acceptance of an Islamic prohibition on women assuming the status of heads of state. See also Iqtidar, H., (2009), ‘JI Pakistan: Learning to be Left’ in Khan, N. (ed.), Beyond Crisis: Reevaluating Pakistan, Delhi: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar.

41 Javed Ghamidi (trans. Shehzad Saleem) in ‘Religious Parties’ specifies that those who aim to bring about a wholescale revolution are in principle to be rejected because such alterations may rightly only be enacted by politicians. Members of a religious elite are carriers of specialist knowledge and their rightful duty is to ‘disseminate the basic message of Islam and to reform the moral character of the people. These are the parties that assist an Islamic government in fulfilling its primary duty of Da'wah-ilal-khair, Amar-bil-Ma'roof and Nahee-’anil-Munkar and an Islamic Government is as such indebted to them for this service’. See http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/issue/content.aspx?id=1096 [accessed 28 March 2011].

42 More details available on their website: www.al-mawrid.org.

43 Both Ishraq and Renaissance are mailed to members and other readers. Full copies are also available on the Al-Mawrid website. There is additionally a link to an online lecture series by Ghamidi and in conjunction with the Dunya Network, an archive of his current weekly television show Deen Au Daanish.

44 Two of its prominent research fellows have been members of the Social Sciences faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). LUMS is, in addition to being the highest ranked and most elite university in the country, the only one where comprehensive revision has been undertaken of the government mandated curriculum for Islamic Studies. Every chartered university in Pakistan must offer this course as a condition for the grant of a degree.

45 Masud, Rethinking Shariat, pp. 356–357.

46 Lacroix, S., (2004), Between Islamists and Liberals: Saudi Arabia's New ‘Islamo-Liberal’ Reformists, Middle East Journal, 58:3345365, 346CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stacher, J. A., (2002), ‘Post-Islamist Rumblings in Egypt: The Emergence of the Wasat Party’, Middle East Journal, 56:3415432Google Scholar.

47 What is apparent in speaking with Ghamidi and his associates is the sense of belonging to a community of Ulema. Often, in speech, there is reference to the fact that their controversial statements about Islamic truth and duties are in conformity with the thought of ‘mainstream ulema’ and validation sought through this alignment.

48 ‘Editorial: Hudood laws, Ghamidi's resignation’ Daily Times, 22 September 2006. The editorial bemoans Ghamidi's resignation from the Council of Islamic Ideology whilst celebrating both his and Dr Khalid Masud's appointment in the first place for having undertaken research which ‘debunks the idea of any fixity in Islam’.

49 See Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, ‘Univocity of the Qur'anic Text’: http://www.al-mawrid.org/pages/articles_english_detail.php?rid=23&cid=82 [accessed 9 February 2011].

50 In this Ghamidi’ seems to be following in the footsteps of his teacher and his guide: ‘Perhaps the most sustained effort to bring out the unity of the quranic text has been made by two exegetes of the Indian subcontinent, Amid al-Din al-Farahi and his student Amin Islahi (d. 1997)’, Mir, M., (2009), ‘Unity of the Text of the Quran’, Encyclopaedia of the Quran, McAuliffe, J. D., (ed.), Brill: CD RomGoogle Scholar.

51 Ghamidi writes: The directive of war and jihād has been given to the Muslims as a collectivity. None of the pertinent verses in the Qur’ān addresses the Muslims in their individual capacity’ in ‘Jihad and War in Islam’, Renaissance at: http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/issue/content.aspx?id=1193 [accessed 9 February 2011]. Additionally Ifikhar quotes Ghamidi from his volume Mizan ‘without political sovereignty jihaad becomes fasaad [disorder, chaos, anarchy, etc]. How is it possible that a group which does not even have the right to award punishment to a criminal should be given the right to wage war? Ghamidi, J. A., Qaanuune da`wat; Urdu; p. 35), ‘No Jihad Without State’ at: http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/issue/content.aspx?id=803 [accessed 9 February 2011].

52 Rights and Duties of a Citizen Javed Ghamidi (trans. Shahzad Saleem), http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/issue/content.aspx?id=980 [accessed 9 February 2011].

54 While this is mostly a formal point, it seems to have some historical precedent. See particularly, Sonbol, A., (2003), Women in Shari'ah Courts: A Historical and Methodological Discussion, Fordham International Law Journal, 27: 225253Google Scholar. Sonbol looks at the possibilities of negotiating through a fractured fiqh landscape from the perspective of women at a time when mixed forms of legality existed within the Ottoman state.

55 Jackson, S. A., (2002), ‘Jihad and the Modern World’, The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, 7:1125Google Scholar. While Jackson is referring specifically to the Ulema as translators and mediators in the field of Islamic Law, it is used here more broadly to include also Islamic political parties in addition to members of the Ulema who had to varying degrees, through colonialism and afterwards, been integrated into the state apparatus. See note 14 above.

56 The Offence of Zina (Enforcement Of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979. Broadly, the Hudood Ordinances is a term used to refer together a set of four Ordinances dealing the offences of rape, consentual sex and bringing false witness. For an extended discussion of the laws, the jurisprudence they generated as well as a critique from multiple perspectives, see Cheema, M. H. and Mustafa, A. R., (2008), ‘From the Hudood Ordinances to the Protection of Women Act: Islamic Critiques of the Hudood Laws of Pakistan’, UCLA Journal of Islamic & Near Eastern Law, 8:1Google Scholar.

57 Qanoon-e-Shahadat 1984 (1984 Order) contains the general rules of evidence. As the replacement for the Evidence Act of 1872 its object is to ensure conformity with the injunctions of Islam in reference to judicial proceedings. Its particular contravention of equality rights is in its reduction of the value of a woman's testimony to half that of a man in a range of civil matters.

58 These constitute a number of enactments undertaken over the early 1980s which have generally had the effect of enabling a random minority persecution.

59 As noted in some detail, this same constituency as opponents of the Zia regime had nonetheless ‘learned to argue with Islamic symbols’. Metcalf, B. (2004) Islamic Contestations Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 236254Google Scholar. See also Mumtaz, K. and Shaheed, F., (1987), Women of Pakistan Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, Lahore: Vanguard Books, Chapter 1Google Scholar, which recounts the ways in which Islam served a useful function as inspiration for awakening women's political consciousness and for framing a progressive politics leading up to the creation of Pakistan.

60 In addition to appointments at the Council of Islamic Ideology that accorded with the goal of empowering reformist Muslim scholars, others, such as Dr Riffat Hassan, to the post of Director of the Iqbal Academy and even the establishment of a Sufi Council were amongst the more interventionist but simultaneously superfluous efforts undertaken by Musharraf during his reign. For a longer history of the composition and the varying political influence of the Council of Islamic Ideology see, Malik, ‘Legitimising Islamisation: The Council for Islamic Ideology’, Colonisation of Islam, pp. 33–55.

61 Constitution of Pakistan 1973, Article 203.

62 I repeat the terminology of ‘weak state’ as indicative of its use within a global disciplinary regime. See Footnote 18 above.

63 Fitzpatrick, P., (2003), ‘Gods Would be Needed. American Empire and the Rule of (International) Law’, Leiden Journal of International Law 16:3429466CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Charles Taylor traces this identification through successive social imaginaries and perhaps most pertinent to this episode in the nation's history is a model of shifting bonds of religious filiation which accounts for God's ultimate ‘presence in the polity’ supplemented by a ‘moral order that is seen as established by God’. Taylor, C., (2006), Religious Mobilizations, Public Culture 18:2, 281300, 284CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 NavarroYashin, Y. Yashin, Y., (2002), Faces of the State Secularism and Public Life in Turkey, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 27Google Scholar.

65 Sajoo, A. B., (2004), The Ethics of the Public Square A Preliminary Muslim Critique Polylog at http://them.polylog.org/3/asa-en.htm [accessed 9 February 2011]; and Civil Society in the Muslim World: Contemporary Perspectives, Institute of Ismaili Studies, Sajoo, provide a cogent overview of the ways in which the liberal conception of ‘seeking the right rather than the good’ was also matched somewhat by a growth of scholarship in the 1990s concerned with defining a communitarian ethos of ‘solidarity and engaged citizenship’ on the assumption of shared commitments to counteract the ‘corrosive effects of liberal individualism’. See also Taylor, Charles, (1998), ‘Modes of Secularism’, in Bhargava, R. (ed.), Secularism and its Critics, Delhi: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar.

66 For a broader refutation of the associated charges against Shariat norms as being static and unchanging, see Hallaq, W., (1984), Was the Gate of Ijtihād Closed? International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 16:1, 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Makdisi, J., (1985), ‘Legal Logic and Equity in Islamic Law’, American Journal of Comparative Law, 33:1, 6392CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Masud, M. K., Messick, B. and Powers, D. (eds), (1996), Mufti's and their Fatwas, Cambridge: Harvard University PressGoogle Scholar. However, the limitations to the balancing public interest or equity considerations in the hierarchy of sources are also described by Makdisi and in Zaman, Q., (2004), ‘The Ulama of Contemporary Islam and their Conceptions of the Common Good’, in Salvatore, A. and Eickelman, D. S. (eds), Public Islam and the Common Good, Leidin: Brill, pp. 129155Google Scholar.

67 Although the restoration of this Orientalism may be an expression of the latent affiliation between the US-led programme with liberal elites within Muslim societies, one also has to keep in mind the caution that the cultivation of ‘other strands of mindful existence alongside those associated with the need to live virtuous pious Muslim lives’ across urban and rural spaces in Pakistan is not ‘reducible to a model that contrasts Western notions of secular-liberal autonomy with those associated with Islamic traditions of discipline and piety’, Marsden, M.. (2009). ‘A Tour Not So Grand: Mobile Muslims in Northern Pakistan’, Journal of Royal Anthropological Society, 75: 5775CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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69 For an account of the early separation between an ‘epistemically grounded’ and ‘politically divorced’ Islamic legality and its institutional manifestations, see Hallaq, W., (2005), The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 178182Google Scholar.

70 Zaman, Q., (2007), The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 181Google Scholar.

71 Volpi, F. and Turner, B. S., (2009), ‘Making Islamic Authority Matter’, Theory Culture Society, 24:2, 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Ibid. p. 10.

73 It is extremely important to highlight that this is of course where Mahmood, Asad and others would situate their critique, insofar as the range of freedoms that exist within a liberal and democratic political sphere are already also structured by prior forms of violence and exclusion. For a particular powerful critique of Asad's disavowal of redemptive politics see Shulman, G., (2006), ‘Redemption, Secularization, Politics’, in Hirschkind, , Powers of the Secular Modern, pp. 158159Google Scholar.

74 See ‘Consensus on Amending Hudood Ordinance’, The News, 12 June 2006, at http://www.thenews.com.pk.

75 Qureishi, A., (2006), Interpreting the Qur'an and the Constitution: Similarities in the Use of Text, Tradition, and Reason in Islamic and American Jurisprudence, Cardozo Law Review, 28: 67Google Scholar.

76 Asif Iftikhar, (2009). ‘A Discussion on Ijma and Ijtihad’, Unpublished paper.

77 Asif Iftikhar, personal interview, 14 June 2009.

78 Ghamidi does not use this term but also does not simply mark a division in reference to the more commonly used term of siyasat for political matters.

79 Against Ghamidi's recommendation that formal Islamic Studies teaching be replaced by an early schooling emphasis on ethics, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in ‘an effort to improve his religious credentials’ made the alternate suggestion to begin even earlier with religious education. Hoodhboy, P., ‘Waiting for Enlightenment’, Friday Times, 21 and 22 July 2006.

80 Asad, T., (1993), ‘Limits of Criticism in the Middle East: Limits of Islamic Public Arguments’ Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press pp. 200238Google Scholar.

81 While he elaborates this broader imperative with a direct reference to the work of Abu al-A'la Mawdudi in Tafhim al-Qur'an by outlining the necessity of consultation and majority assent for the trading of opinions and the making of law, as indication of his earlier break from Jamaat-I-Islami, Ghamidi also differs insofar as he sees the role of Islamist parties in the state as representing sectoral or group interests which work to counter the goal of achieving majority consensus.

82 Ghamidi, Personal Interview, 31 July 2009.

83 Ahmed, K., ‘Dr Hoodbhoy versus Javed Ghamidi’, Daily Times, 1 August 2006. Ahmed has translated jazza as ‘award’ and saza as ‘punishment’ which seem to accord with their common usage. See also Ghamidi, ‘Rights and Duties of a Citizen’, where he refers to the notion of brotherhood as the condition subsisting between all members of the community ‘irrespective of their status in the hereafter’.

84 Ghamidi, Personal Interview, 31 July 2009.

85 See in particular the exchange between Mahmood and Stathis Gourgouris: Mahmood, S., (1996), ‘Is Critique Secular?’, A Symposium at Berkely, Public Culture, 20:3447452CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gourgoris, Stathis, ‘Detranscendentalizing Secularism’, Public Culture, 20:3, 437445CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Antisecularist Failures A Counterresponse to Mahmood, Saba’, Public Culture, 20:3453–59Google Scholar. The greater part of Gourgouris's riposte is directed at Mahmood's alignment of liberalism with secularism.

86 For a more detailed critique of this merging of various forms of discourse see Caton, A., (2006), ‘“What is an ‘Authorizing Discourse”’, in Hirschkind, C., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, Palo Alto: Stanford University PressGoogle Scholar.

87 Mahmood, Secularism, Hemeneutics Empire. See also Mahmood, S., (2005), Politics of Piety Princeton: Princeton University PressGoogle Scholar.

88 Hirschkind. Hermeneutics or Heresy? P. 464.

89 Jackson, S., (2002), On the Boundaries of Religious Tolerance in Islam, Karachi: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar.

90 Ahmed, A., (1967), Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857–1964, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 8286Google Scholar.

91 Robinson, F., (1993), Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print, Modern Asian Studies, 27:1, 229251CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Metcalf, B. Islamic Contestations, p. 51; and Metcalf, B., (1982), Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860–1900, Princeton: Princeton University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Zaman, Q. (2010), ‘The Ulema in the Twenty-First Century’, The Ulema of Contemporary Islam. Princeton University Press, pp. 181192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.