When Pakistan was founded in 1947, it had a rich tapestry of
different religious groups, ranging from Sunni and Shiite Muslims
to Christians, Parsis, Hindus, and Jainists. Non-Muslims comprised
23 percent of the total population, and non-Sunnis comprised a
quarter of the Muslim population. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's
first president, proclaimed that the nation had a place for all of
its citizens, regardless of religion. Today, non-Muslims comprise a
mere 3 percent of the population, and in recent years all
non-Sunnis have been subjected to increasing levels of persecution
and violence. What happened? In Purifying the Land of the Pure,
Farahnaz Ispahani analyzes Pakistan's policies towards its
religious minority populations, both Muslim and non-Muslim, since
independence in 1947. Originally created as a homeland for South
Asia's Muslims, Pakistan was designed to protect the subcontinent's
largest religious minority. But soon after independence, religious
as well as some political leaders declared that the objective of
Pakistan's creation was more specific and narrow: to create an
Islamic State. In 1949, Pakistan's Constituent Assembly ratified
this objective, and that in turn established the path that Pakistan
would follow. The event that accelerated the pace towards
intolerance of non-Sunnis, however, was the assumption of power by
President Zia Ul Haq over a quarter century later, in 1977. His
regime promoted a stricter version of Sunni Islam at the expense of
other denominations, and by the end of his reign the Pakistani
state was no longer a welcome place for minorities. Many people
from religious minorities fled, but those who remained faced
escalating persecution, both from state and non-state actors which
enjoyed the tacit support of the regime. The years since 9/11 have
been punctuated by recurrent pogroms against religious minorities,
and thousands have died. Shiites have suffered the most assaults
from Sunni extremists, but virtually every minority has been
attacked repeatedly. Ispahani traces this history, and stresses how
the contradictions at the heart of the Pakistani state-building
project have fueled the intolerance. Originally created as a
homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims, Pakistan was still
religiously very diverse. Over time, efforts to 'correct' this
problem radicalized significant segments of the Sunni population,
setting in motion a self-reinforcing process of escalating
persecution. Some elements of the ruling class exploited these
prejudices in opportunistic fashion, while others were zealots
themselves. In the end, what drove these elements did not matter
much, as the result was the same: a state that ignored frequent
attacks on religious minorities by increasingly radicalized Sunni
groups bent on 'purifying' the nation. Concise yet sweeping in its
coverage, Purifying the Land of the Pure will be essential reading
for anyone interested in why this pivotal geopolitical player is so
plagued by radicalism and violence.
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