Saleem Khan, London Metropolitan University, Religious Nationalism and Sectarianism in Pakistan

Introduction

Since the American occupation of Iraq, intra-Muslim violence has become daily news but prior to 2003, Pakistan not Iraq was the global centre for violent conflict between different Muslim sects. In 1947, British India was divided on religious lines and two nation-states India and Pakistan emerged. The British educated founding fathers of Pakistan perceived a united India as being detrimental to Muslims because as a minority Muslims would be not be recognized as equals by the Hindu majority state which would also suppress their rights so the concept of Pakistan was formulated as a nation-state where some aspects of liberal democracy would be implanted so that fairness and non-interference would be the norm. In the 1970s partly because of violent challenges to the state by ethno-nationalist movements partly inspired by uneven economic development and the upheavals in the international arena due to the Cold War, there was a major shift away from pluralistic politics and a move towards greater Islamisation beginning with the narrowing of the definition of a Muslim by the state in which the state gave up its neutrality. Additional government legislation imposing uniform religious taxes widen sectarian differences between the Sunni majority and Shia minority. By not initially accommodating Shia collective demands the state had alienated many of them. The subsequent and reluctant autonomy awarded to the Shias implied that the state recognized them which made Sunni militants fear that the Pakistani nation-state was not synonymous with Sunni Islam. Pakistan is probably the country which has the most diverse collection of Muslim sects, sub-sects and political parties in which sectarianism is implicitly or explicitly a part of the political discourse. Pakistan is