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Embracing the Ummah: Student Politics beyond State Power in Pakistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

Matthew J. Nelson
Matthew J. Nelson*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Studies of student politics in Pakistan often focus on the competition between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ student groups—for example, the leftward-leaning National Students Federation, regional parties with a broadly secular orientation like the Pakhtun Students Federation, the Islami Jamiat-e-Tuleba (Islamic Students Association), and sectarian groups like the (Shi'a) Imamia Students Organization. This paper describes the emergence of an increasingly violent stalemate between and amongst these groups since the 1960s. It then argues that for a growing number of students this stalemate produced a certain disenchantment with exclusionary efforts to control the ‘state-based Muslim nationalism’ that lay behind the formation of Pakistan itself. Seeking alternatives, these disenchanted students developed an interest in non-state-based forms of Muslim solidarity—forms that rejected the constraints of territorial Muslim nationalism in favour of transnational movements focused on the revitalization of Muslim solidarity on a truly global scale—movements like the (Deobandi) Tablighi Jama'at and the (Barelwi) Da'wat-e-Islami. Tracing this development, this paper takes up one application of Talal Asad's argument that alternative expressions of religion (and religious solidarity) are ‘produced’ by specific political circumstances. It also examines this formulation in the light of other theories that take an interest in the effects—indeed the potentially ‘democratizing’ effects—of protracted political stalemates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , May 2011 , pp. 565 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the National Bureau of Asian Research for field research support and the following individuals for their comments and assistance: Syed Samar Abbas, Mumtaz Ahmad, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, David Gilmartin, Humeira Iqtidar, Ahmad Ali Khan, Laeeq Khan, Nadeem Paracha, Ziaullah Ranjah and two anonymous reviewers for Modern Asian Studies. This paper was completed in 2010 with financial support from the Wolfensohn Family Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA.

References

1 See Asad, T. (1983). ‘Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz’, Man, 18:2, 237–259CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Asad, T. (1993). Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press)Google Scholar; and Asad, T. (2001). ‘Reading a Modern Classic: W. C. Smith's “The Meaning and End of Religion”’, History of Religions, 40:3, 205–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Asad, T. (1983), ‘Anthropological Conceptions of Religion’, p. 252.

3 In this paper my use of the term ‘power’ is not confined to the influence of any formal institution (for example, a monastery, a madrasa, or the modern state). On the contrary, it includes informal and often highly individualized forms of influence as well. It is important to stress, however, that in the context of this paper individualized efforts to advance authoritative expressions of appropriate religious practice are often tied to specific political organizations. In fact political parties and their affiliates are routinely called upon to support or advance the ‘religious’ claims of particular individuals within, or through, the state. State-based forms of influence remain extremely important, in other words, even if the terms of power itself are not automatically defined by the parameters of the state alone.

4 See, for example, Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. W. (1948). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge), p. 78Google Scholar.

5 Mohammad Iqbal articulated his notion of a ‘territorialized’ Muslim-majority state most famously in his presidential address to the All-Indian Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930. See Iqbal, M. ‘Separate Muslim Nationhood in India’ in Malik, F. M., Muslim Political Thought: A Reconstruction (Lahore: Alhamra Publishing, 2002), pp. 191–209Google Scholar. Iqbal's appreciation for ‘pan-Islamism,’ in other words, did not diminish his appreciation for the value of the modern territorial state, as reflected, for example, in his rather pragmatic view of Turkey after 1925. See also Iqbal, M. (1930). The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Kapur Art Printing Works), pp. 220–223, 225–226Google Scholar.

6 Maulana Abul Kalam Azad articulated his deterritorialized (read: ‘transnational’) approach to questions of religious-cum-political reform in his writing for Al-Hilal, in his support for the Khilafat Movement, and, finally, in his support for the Indian National Congress (as opposed to the All-India Muslim League and its demand for ‘Pakistan’). He simply refused to believe that an exclusive Muslim community could be, or should be, ‘nationalized.’ See, especially, Douglas, I. H. (1988). Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography, Minault, G. and Troll, C. W. (eds), (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 225–226Google Scholar, 237, 262.

7 See Nasr, S. V. R. (1994). The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama'at-i Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press)Google Scholar; and Nasr, S. V. R. (1996). Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (New York: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar.

8 The Anjuman-e-Tuleba-e-Islam is characterized by a Barelwi (Ahl-e-Sunnat) religious-cum-political orientation.

9 The Imamia Students Organization has a Shi'a (Ithna Ashari) orientation.

10 See Devji, F. (2009). The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press)Google Scholar. Devji does not focus on non-violent transnational movements like the Tablighi Jama'at and Da'wat-e-Islami; instead, he focuses on jihadi groups with much smaller numbers of adherents. With Devji, however, I seek to illuminate the ways in which historically situated political conditions ‘produce’ new forms of religious-cum-political solidarity. For Devji this process generates a particular ‘search for humanity’; for me it generates a push for rhetorically ‘transnational’ forms of solidarity that reject the territorialized assumptions underlying the nationalist formation of Pakistan. For earlier efforts to locate transnational forms of solidarity apart from the ‘nation,’ see Gupta, A. (1992). ‘The Song of the Non-Aligned Movement’, Cultural Anthropology, 7:1, 63–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 This colonial point of departure is theoretically arbitrary; one could just as easily begin with an account of ‘productive’ power in pre-colonial South Asia. See for example Bayly, C. A. (1985). ‘The Pre-history of Communalism’, Modern Asian Studies, 19:2, 177–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Other participants in this debate, particularly in conjunction with the Khilafat Movement, included the famous Ali brothers. See, for instance, Minault, G. (1982). The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press)Google Scholar; Pandey, G. (1990). The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar, and Robinson, F. (1993). Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923 (Delhi: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar.

13 See Hardy, P. (1971). Partners in Freedom and True Muslims: The Political Thought of Some Muslim Scholars in British India, 1912–1947 (Lund: Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies) pp. 37–43Google Scholar; Friedmann, Y. (1971). ‘The Attitude of the Jam'iyyat-i ‘Ulama’-i Hind to the Indian National Movement and the Establishment of Pakistan’, Asian and African Studies, 7, 157–180Google Scholar; and Zaman, M. Q. (2002). The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 32–36Google Scholar.

14 According to Kiren Aziz Chaudhary and Peter McDonough, explicitly religious groups ‘do not have a monopoly on piety’ in Pakistan. They explain that, ‘since the level of religiosity. . .is so high many of the leftist students [also] consider themselves [to be] genuinely religious’. See Chaudhary, K. A. and McDonough, P. (1983). ‘State, Society, and Sin: The Political Beliefs of University Students in Pakistan’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 32:1, 18–19Google Scholar.

15 According to Chaudhry and McDonough, ‘the appeal is to community convention and not, strictly speaking, to [any specific] ethical standards’ (emphasis added). ‘State, Society, and Sin’, p. 32.

16 It is important to note that fleeting victories for a particular religious-cum-political party or faction were not uncommon. But, more often than not, these victories produced little more than renewed forms of winner-take-all centralization—political as well as doctrinal patterns of centralization that, in turn, produced their own forms of fragmentation within the ‘victorious’ party as well as bitter resistance outside it. This combination had a tendency to weaken the ‘winning’ party in ways that set the stage for a new cycle of zero-sum religious-cum-political competition (over and over again). With this in mind, it is important to stress that the political orientation of the groups discussed in this paper was not monolithic in the sense that these groups failed to encounter internal disagreement or pursue strategic alliances. On the contrary, they simply failed to embrace the notion that political competition (both internally and with respect to other groups) was a satisfactory ‘end state’ in and of itself. In fact I simply wish to highlight the ways in which this ideational pattern contributed to a protracted political stalemate that, in turn, fostered an alternative (transnational) set of campus-based ‘ideas about Islam’.

17 See also Ziring, L. (1978). ‘Dilemmas of Higher Education in Pakistan: A Political Perspective’, Asian Affairs, 5:5, 307–324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See Asad, T. (1986). ‘Medieval Heresy: An Anthropological View’, Social History, 11:3, 354CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 The field-based data for this paper were collected via informal unstructured interviews by two research assistants (one Sunni, one Shi'a) from the Department of Political Science at the University of Peshawar. These interviews were conducted in both public and private-sector universities. Public: University of Karachi, University of Peshawar, Quaid-e-Azam University, Punjab University, the University of Arid Agriculture (Rawalpindi), King Edward Medical College (Lahore), and the Lahore University of Engineering and Technology. Private: COMSATS (Islamabad), the Fatima Jinnah Women's University (Rawalpindi), the Allama Iqbal Open University (Rawalpindi), Punjab College of Law (Lahore), Allied College of Textile Management (Lahore), Hamdard University (Karachi), Preston University (Karachi), the Newport Institute of Communications and Economics (Karachi), and Sindh Medical College (Dow University of Health Sciences) (Karachi).

20 See Nasr, S. V. R. (1992). ‘Students, Islam, and Politics: Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba in Pakistan’, Middle East Journal, 46:1, 59–76Google Scholar.

21 Personal correspondence (August 2007, June 2009). In the end the university sought to restore the status quo ante in the form of sequential prayer timings within a single campus mosque. Still, both sides insisted that, from a purely religious point of view, its prayer timings were the only truly ‘Islamic’ timings.

22 Just a few weeks before this event, national and provincial elections were held in Pakistan, and a provincial coalition led by the Jama'at-e-Islami known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) was defeated by the Pakhtun-nationalist Awami National Party, suggesting that the campus-based politics of the Peshawar University Teachers Association were not fully determined by the politics of the province as a whole.

23 See, for example, Mandaville, P. (2001). Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (London: Routledge)Google Scholar. See also Roy, O. and Abou-Zahab, M. (2004). Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection (London: Hurst and Co.)Google Scholar.

24 The founder of the Tablighi Jama'at, Maulana Mohammad Ilyas Kandhalawi, was critical of state power. But he was equally critical of the institutionalized rigidities associated with existing Sufi silsalas (orders) and the madrasa-based ulema. Still, these concerns should not be taken to suggest that Kandhalawi was completely set apart from such influences. In fact he drew upon them quite heavily during the early years of the Tablighi Jama'at, with special reference to the (Deobandi) madrasa-based work of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi.

25 See Ahmad, M. (1994). ‘Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat of South Asia’, in Marty, M. E. and Appleby, R. S., Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 457–530Google Scholar.

26 For a brief account of the formal institutional side of the Tablighi Jama'at, see Metcalf, B. D. (1994). ‘“Remaking Ourselves”: Islamic Self-Fashioning in a Global Movement of Spiritual Renewal’, in Marty, M. E. and Appleby, R. S., Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 710, 720Google Scholar. See also Reetz, D. (2008). ‘The “Faith Bureaucracy” of the Tablighi Jama'at: An Insight into Their System of Self-Organization’, in Beckerlegge, G., Colonialism, Modernity, and Religious Identities: Religious Reform Movements in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp. 98–124Google Scholar.

27 The Six Points of the Tablighis are: (1) shahada (that is, the Muslim article of faith: ‘there is no god but God, and Mohammad is His Prophet’), (2) salat (five daily prayers), (3) ’ilm and dhikr (scriptural mantras in remembrance of God), (4) ikram-e-Muslimeen (respect for all Muslims), (5) ikhlas-e-niyyat (sincere intentions), and, finally, (6) tafrigh-e-waqt (sparing time). The Fazail-e-Amal was composed by Maulana Mohammad Zakaria Kandhalawi.

28 Yoginder Sikand argues that ‘participation in the TJ. . .can be seen as. . .a powerful critique of existing political systems’. See Sikand, Y. (2002). The Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jama'at, 1920–2000: A Cross-Country Comparative Study (Hyderabad: Orient Longman), p. 270Google Scholar. Mohammad Khalid Masud extends this assessment, noting that ‘the political vision of [the TJ]’ reflects a special emphasis on what might be called ‘umma consciousness’. See Masud, M. K. (2000). ‘Ideology and Legitimacy’ in Masud, M. K.Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama'at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal (Leiden: Brill), p. 99Google Scholar.

29 See Gugler, T. K. (2008). ‘Jihad, Da'wa, and Hijra: Islamic Missionary Movements in Europe,’ http://www.zmo.de/mitarbeiter/gugler/jihad,%20dawa%20and%20hijra.pdf [accessed 4 March 2011].

30 See Gugler, T. K. (n.d.) ‘Symbols of the Super-Muslim: Sunnah, Sunnaization, and Self-Fashioning in the Islamic Missionary Movements Tablighi Jama'at, Da'wat-e-Islami, and Sunni Da'wat-e-Islami’. http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/volltexte/2008/142/pdf/Gugler_Politics_of_Difference.pdf [accessed 4 March 2011], pp. 9–10.

31 Gugler, ‘Symbols of the Super-Muslim’, p. 7.

32 Gugler, ‘Symbols of the Super-Muslim’, p. 11; see also Masud, ‘Ideology and Legitimacy’, pp. 94–96.

33 ‘While it is true that the movement's focus has been on. . .eschewing. . .matters of. . .state and party politics’, notes Yoginder Sikand, ‘this does not mean that the TJ has nothing to do with politics’. On the contrary, he argues that we must remember to ‘shift our attention from our obsessive concern with affairs of the state. . .and see politics as the dynamics of power relations in society as a whole’. Sikand, Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jama'at, p. 263.

34 Stressing its monopolizing political aspirations, the Democratic Students Federation (DSF) changed its name to the All-Pakistan Students Organization (APSO) in 1953, committing itself to the pursuit of a nationwide student-led communist revolution.

35 See Paracha, N. F. (2000) ‘Student Politics in Pakistan: A Celebration, Lament, and History’, http://nadeemfparacha.wordpress.com/student-politics-in-pakistan-a-celebration-lament-history/ [accessed 4 March 2011].

36 The Republican Party led by Firoz Khan Noon was created with support from Ayub Khan as a breakaway faction of the Pakistan Muslim League. After its formation in 1955, however, it collapsed in the wake of Pakistan's first military coup in 1958.

37 For an account of the origins and development of the Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba, between its formation in 1947 and the ratification of its constitution in 1952, see Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, pp. 60–63. According to Nasr, ‘the [IJT's] worldview. . .took shape. . .in contradistinction to Marxism’, and ‘this ideological vision in turn determined [the] Jamiat's conduct, wherein all issues. . .were viewed as critical choices between antithetical and mutually exclusive absolutes—Islam or Marxism’. Nasr goes on to note that this pattern fostered ‘an effort at hegemonic control’, which eventually ‘culminated in clashes’, p. 62. See also Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, pp. 64–66.

38 See Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 66.

39 Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, pp. 6–8.

40 See Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 74. Nasr writes, ‘Other Islamic parties quickly became aware of the basis of [the IJT's] success and strengthened their own student organizations’. He explains that ‘a number of these organizations were formed by people who broke away from the [IJT]’, and eventually ‘[these] neophyte student organizations began to. . .divide the religious vote and. . .reduce [the IJT's] power base’. In footnote 50, Nasr mentions the Anjuman-e-Tuleba-e-Islam (Sunni Barelwi) and the Jamiat-e-Tuleba Ahl-e-Hadith Pakistan (Sunni Ahl-e-Hadith). (For a discussion of similar processes during the late-1980s see also Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, pp. 76–77.)

41 For an account of the religious-cum-political conflict unfolding between the IJT and Ayub Khan, see Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, pp. 63–64.

42 Ayub Khan clearly expected his ‘diversionary’ support for the Tablighi Jama'at to reduce the influence of its campus-based rivals. Indeed, the IJT was scathing in its criticism of the TJ, with Maududi himself accusing the Tablighi Jama'at of betraying the cause of Islam. (Naturally, the emir of the TJ responded in kind.) See Ahmad, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’, pp. 518, 522.

43 Ahmad, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’, p. 518.

44 Ahmad, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’, p. 519; see also Metcalf, ‘“Remaking Ourselves”’, pp. 721, 722.

45 Ahmad, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’, p. 519.

46 This criticism became particularly vociferous after 1974 when Bhutto decided to support a constitutional amendment defining Pakistan's beleaguered Ahmedi minority as a ‘non-Muslim’ minority owing to their ostensibly heretical approach to ‘the finality of prophethood in Islam’. See Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, p. 179.

47 For an account of campus-based elections in 1976 (both in Karachi and in Lahore), see Ahmed, A. D. (2000). Pakistan mein Tulba Tehreek (Lahore: Mashal Publications), p. 155Google Scholar.

48 Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, p. 9.

49 See Nasr, S. V. R. (1993). ‘Islamic Opposition to the Islamic State: The Jama'at-i Islami, 1977–88’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 25:2, 269–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 67–68.

50 Throughout the 1970s, Nasr explains that the IJT ‘adopted militant [forms of] dissent’, adding that, even as a campus-based student actor, it ‘proved to be a tenacious opponent for the PPP and a central actor in the anti-Bhutto national campaign that eventually led to the fall of the prime minister in 1977’. Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 67.

51 Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, p. 12; see also Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 67; Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, p. 69.

52 See Gugler, T. K. (n.d.). ‘Marketing Muhammad: Competing Sunnah-Brands on Postmodern Islamic Identity Markets’ http://www.zmo.de/Mitarbeiter/Gugler/Marketing%20Muhammad.pdf [accessed 4 March 2011], p. 4.

53 See Gugler, ‘Symbols of the Super-Muslim’, p. 11.

54 For a discussion of the ‘universalizing’ aspirations embedded within specific ‘sectarian’ attachments, see Nelson, M. J. (2009). ‘Dealing with Difference: Religious Education and the Challenge of Democracy in Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, 43:3, 591–618CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, p. 20. Nasr adds that ‘campus violence by and against [the IJT] and [the] continual assassination of student leaders. . .began to tarnish the. . .heroic image [the IJT] possessed in some circles because of its earlier opposition to Bhutto’. He notes that ‘violence became endemic to the organization’, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 68. See also Nasr, ‘Islamic Opposition to the Islamic State’, pp. 269–270.

56 See Chaudhry and McDonough, ‘State, Society, and Sin’, p. 16.

57 For a chronology of this ban's uneven enforcement, see Proposed Revival of Students Unions in Pakistan (August 2008). (Islamabad: PILDAT), p. 7. See also Nasr, ‘Students, Islam, and Politics’, p. 68.

58 Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, p. 21. ‘At the University of Karachi,’ Paracha notes that ‘the harassed students retaliated. . .by forcefully taking over hostel areas that were formerly held by [the] IJT,’ For a more detailed account of the negotiations between the IJT, the Jama'at-e-Islami, and Zia, including an account of Zia's decision to allow the IJT to remain active on most campuses—a decision Zia retracted shortly after the completion of his presidential referendum in 1985—see Nasr, ‘Islamic Opposition to the Islamic State’, p. 270.

59 After leaving the IJT in 1974, those who went on to form the All-Pakistan Muttahida Student Organization in 1978 later collaborated with the PSF as part of the anti-Zia USM coalition. After Zia's departure, however, the USM collapsed.

60 See Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, p. 77; see also Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, pp. 11, 12, 18, 22. This conflict between the Pakistan People's Party-affiliated PSF and the MQM-affiliated All-Pakistan Muttahida Student Organization continued during the second government led by Benazir Bhutto Between 1993 and 1996. As Paracha notes, ‘thousands of MQM and All-Pakistan Muttahida Student Organization militants were arrested and hundreds lost their lives’, p. 31.

61 Paracha, ‘Student Politics’, p. 29. See also Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, p. 77. N.b. Nasr notes that deadly clashes between the IJT and the PML(N)-affiliated MSF emerged even before the election of Nawaz Sharif in 1990.

62 A national student survey completed in March 2008 revealed that more than 70 per cent of all students felt that students should not be permitted to affiliate themselves with existing political parties, and more than 75 per cent felt that administrators should impose a strict Code of Conduct ‘to ensure that there is no violence on campus’. National Survey on Student Politics 2008. http://www.bargad.org.pk/downloads/Briefing_NSTP_2008.pdf [accessed 8 March 2011].

63 Hussain, F. (13–19 September 2008). ‘Towards a Violence-Free Campus’, http://www.magtheweekly.com/21/focus.php [originally accessed 20 May 2010—no longer online]. By and large, private-sector universities emerged after General Zia-ul-Haq stepped in to reverse the dirigiste policies of his predecessor, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

64 See Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution.

65 Abbas, M. (1–7 July 2005). ‘Hizb-ut-Tahrir Attracts Educated Elites in Pakistan’, The Friday Times (Lahore)Google Scholar.

66 A 2005 Lahore High Court ruling appeared to challenge the reach of this ‘anti-terrorism’ ban. See Pakistan Law Digest 2005 (Lahore 370).

67 When the famously controversial Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb tucked into his turban—first published in 2005—were re-published in 2008, several protests were coordinated by Hizb-ut-Tahrir. These protests were not large. But, as several observers rushed to point out, their significance lay in the profile of their participants: urban, educated, professional, and overwhelmingly middle class.

68 For details, see ‘Q&A with Naveed Butt’ (7 March 2008). http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/activism/asia/2104-qaa-with-naveed-butt> [originally accessed 20 May 2010—no longer online]. According to Dr Naveed Butt, Hizb-ut-Tahrir was not a ‘terrorist’ organization. It was merely an ‘intellectual movement targeting the [urban] educated classes’.

69 See Nelson, ‘Dealing with Difference’.

70 See Rustow, C. (1970). ‘Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model’, Comparative Politics, 2:3, 337–363CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 See Waterbury, J. (1997). ‘Fortuitous By-Products’, Comparative Politics, 29:3, 383–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Waterbury, J. (1994). ‘Democracy without Democrats? The Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle East’, in Salame, G., Democracy without Democrats? (London: I.B. Tauris), pp. 23–47Google Scholar.

72 Chaudhry and McDonough argue (‘at the risk of some simplification’) that ‘Islam [in Pakistan] has never countenanced a “Machiavellian moment” through which compromise and even manipulation, however common in actual practice, gained legitimacy’. ‘Soldiers and saints are revered’, whereas ‘politicians tend not to be’, ‘State, Society, and Sin’, p. 13. ‘[W]here. . .the distinction between political means and ultimate ends is more firmly grounded in Machiavellian incrementalism’, they note, ‘the imperfect coherence of ideologies might appear normal and pluralistic’. But ‘in Pakistan this fragmentation has only borderline legitimacy’. For many students, they argue, ‘political life is defined by absolutes, even if the specifics are vague and the relative weight of tone as compared to substance is hard to disentangle’. pp. 34–35.

73 See also Van der Veer, P. (1992). ‘Playing or Praying: A Sufi Saint's Day in Surat’, Journal of Asian Studies, 51:3, 545–564CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollup, O. (1996). ‘Revivalism and Political Opposition among Minority Muslims in Mauritius’, Ethnology, 35:4, 285–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moosa, E. (2000). ‘Worlds “Apart”: Tablighi Jama'at in South Africa Under Apartheid’, in Masud, M. K.Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama'at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal (Leiden: Brill), pp. 206–221Google Scholar.

74 Asad is not categorically disinterested in the productive power of ‘stalemates’. He is simply concerned about the extent to which Waterbury's ruminations regarding the possibility of a link between political ‘stalemates’ and ‘pluralism’ (or democratization) might infect an otherwise fruitful analysis of ‘the politics within Islam’ with an inappropriate set of core ‘western’ assumptions—what Asad might describe as an inappropriate imposition of invasive ‘secular’ or ‘secularizing’ theologies. See Asad, T., Genealogies of Religion, pp. 269–306. See also Van der Veer, P. (1995). ‘The Modernity of Religion’, Social History, 20:3, 365–371CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 See Lincoln, B. (1995). ‘Review of Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam’, in History of Religions, 35:1, 83–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herzfeld, M. (1994). ‘Review of Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam’, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, 26:4, 693–695CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Anjum, O. (2007). ‘Islam as a Discursive Tradition: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 27:3, 656–672CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Asad himself turns to the notion of cultural and/or religious traditions to account for the demarcation of specific boundaries. But the question is: What is the anti-essentialist basis for Asad's a priori identification of the boundary surrounding any particular ‘tradition’?