Pakistan

Since Ayub Khan’s military regime, only officially published textbooks could be used in schools from Grade 1 to college level. Pakistani governments used these mandatory textbooks, especially in social studies, to create a standard narrative of Pakistani history. Under Zia ul-Haq, textbooks were rewritten with an Islamist ideological agenda. Pakistani historian K.K. Aziz describes these textbooks as being replete with historic errors and suggests that their mandatory study amounted to the teaching of “prescribed myths.”60

For most of Zia ul-Haq’s eleven years in power, Pakistanis debated what was or was not Islamic. A story typical of the period said:
A Pakistani youth who was sentenced last summer to have his right hand amputated for stealing a clock from a mosque is still in prison while Islamic scholars debate whether just the fingers or the whole hand should be severed and whether the amputated limb becomes the property of the state or the thief . . . A Karachi bus driver who in 1981 was sentenced to death for adultery is still awaiting a review of the piousness of the required witnesses before the sentence can be executed . . . An intense debate is continuing over whether qisas—“eye for eye” retaliation—should be imposed for injurious assault and murder or whether “blood money” compensation should be paid

Clerics supporting these laws argued that “women were emotional and irritable, with inferior faculties of reason and memory” and that courts ought to discount their testimony as well as that of “the blind, handicapped, lunatics and children.” The leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, declared that “those who oppose such laws are only trying to run away from Islam.

Islamization under Zia ul-Haq was criticized widely around the world for undermining the status of women through laws that reduced the significance of a woman’s testimony to half that of a man in certain trials. Secular democrats and women’s groups also opposed the Hudood Ordinance, which covered sexual offenses and prohibitions and restored Islamic punishments such as flogging

In one year the Majlis-e-Shura discussed “a wide range of draconian new laws.” These included “death for drug trafficking and prostitution, watchdog committees to safeguard public morals, measures to discourage women from buying jewelry and highly embroidered clothes, a ban on ballroom dancing and ‘storm action’ against obscene literature, in which offensive books would be burned in bonfires.

The regime’s task was facilitated by the hijacking to Kabul in March 1981 of a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 727 by members of a group led by late Prime Minister Bhutto’s eldest son, Murtaza Bhutto. The group Al-Zulfikar described itself as a guerilla group dedicated to avenging the elder Bhutto’s death. The hijacking ended after thirteen days with the release of fifty-four political prisoners held by Zia ul-Haq’s regime

The demand by Shiites, in the aftermath of the Zakat controversy, for effective representation at higher levels of the state and recognition of their sectarian interests laid the foundations of bitter Shiite-Sunni conflict, which later led to the creation of terrorist militias within both sects

Pakistan’s Shiite population opposed the compulsory deduction of Zakat on grounds that their sect did not allow compulsion in collection of Zakat. Shiites converged in Islamabad and virtually took over the capital. According to the Washington Post, “Zia’s martial law regime came within hair’s breadth of losing power over that confrontation.”31 The Shiites were exempted from the compulsory deduction of Zakat as a result of these protests.

The Election Commission was authorized to cancel the registration of political parties for “propagation of any opinions or acting in any manner prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan or the sovereignty, integrity or security of Pakistan or of views defaming or ridiculing the judiciary or armed forces.”

At the end of their year-long association with the government, Jamaat-e-Islami ministers complained that the entrenched bureaucracy wielded greater influence than they did. Zia ul-Haq realized that he had overestimated the Jamaat-e-Islami’s ability to run a modern Islamic state.25 After that year, in an effort to create his own hybrid Islamic system for Pakistan, Zia decided to cast a wider net to find Islamists of different persuasions. This opened the way for many clerics and Islamic spiritual leaders from all over the world to advise Zia ul-Haq. The general held dozens of conferences and seminars of Islamic scholars and spiritualists (mashaikh). He issued numerous decrees, some as banal as prohibiting urinals in public places (because the Prophet Muhammad advised against urinating while standing) and others with significant consequences, such as liberalizing visas for Muslim ulema and students from all over the world. The liberalization of visas for Muslim activists enabled Islamists from several countries to set up headquarters in Pakistan, circumventing restrictions on Islamist political activities in their own countries.