contextual and individual. By doing so, they actualize justice. In other words,
each generation will have its own utopia that in substance correlates to its
‘foundational’ mores, even while the form may differ. The stability of Muslim
polities resides in the ability of their leadership to understand the twin aspects
of ‘permanence’ and ‘change,’ and articulate a healthy balance of the principle
while recognizing that it differs in application according to context. The
Muslim polity that is able to project this equilibrium achieves stability, progress
and widespread acceptance.
Thus Pakistan was conceived as an ‘ideal’, a ‘Model Islamic State’, and its
internal ideological fissures, as a result of the clash between traditionalists and
secularists, along with military-civic/political dichotomies, only aggravated
the issues of governance, as well as often hindering civil society. Therefore,
these are the questions we are asking: What is political culture? How is it
effectively described in Muslim polities? What is its existing stock of knowledge,
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core, or its inherited meaning? What attitudes toward governance are
encouraged in Islam? How are these exemplified in Pakistan? The task seems
daunting, yet in Pakistan the broad-based ideals as stipulated by Islam provide
a good starting point for analysis of a people’s outlook toward governance.
Research design, strategy and method
‘For those who see only with their eyes, the distant is always indistinct and
little, becoming less and less as it recedes, till utterly lost; but to the imagi-
nation, which thus reverses the perspective of the senses, the far off is great
6
Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture
and imposing, the magnitude increasing with the distance’. 10 Creative ingenuity is often the act or process of forming a conscious idea of something never
previously perceived for the impetus of artistic or intellectual design. Similarly,
in scholarly environs, the potency of the intellectual rests in the ability to
grasp, with the mind’s eye, a myriad of realities, from differing perspectives
and clearly convey this to others. However, a positivist approach to research
and observation is the antithesis of this rendering of the enlightened scholar.
The ‘scientification’ of the social sciences by positivism proposes analyses of
social phenomena with a mentality corresponding to the physicist. Cox suggests
‘by positivism I mean the effort to conceive social science on the model of
physics … before it has assimilated the principles of relativity and uncer-
tainty’. 11 It fails, then, due to its incapacity to reflect on its own complicity and ‘recognize its embeddedness in social and political life and its contribution
to the prevailing order of things by accepting this order as its framework’. 12
Therefore, the astute researcher discards this analytical approach for a theore-
tical framework of analysis that considers intersubjective meanings, inwardness,
and cultural subtleties. Broadly speaking, this is what is meant by cultural
analysis: to determine the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of a particular
society; to put aside our convictions of what is desirable and assess what the
society under investigation considers significant. The task requires stepping
out of one’s own mindset to view the ‘other’ not through one’s own lens but
through his. Thus, in formulating a fitting research design, strategy and
method for this book, the foregoing theoretical issues were taken into
account. Accordingly, this book utilizes a qualitative research methodology,
which includes discursive interpretation, abductive research strategy and critical
discourse analysis.
To begin with, the methodology of this study is qualitative, involving an
interpretative, naturalistic approach to the concept of political culture and how
it relates to ideological and political instability in Pakistan. This methodology
draws the researcher into the phenomenological complexity of participants’
worlds where situations unfold, and connections, causes and correlations can
be observed as they occur over time.13 It implies a study of phenomenon in their natural settings and attempts to interpret events in terms of the meanings
people bring to them. Therefore, this research methodology examines people’s
words and actions in ‘narrative or descriptive ways more closely representing
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the situation as experienced by participants’.14
In addition, the research design in this study involves discursive interpretation.
This form of interpretation is most pronounced in its opposition to positivism
and absolute universal truisms.15 It emphasizes the importance of the context in which interaction, political or otherwise, takes place, stating that this is
critical for accurate analysis. Rather than assume that data collected in one
context can be generalised beyond it, discursive interpretation and analyses
focus on ways in which people make sense of their interaction, of themselves
or their own mental states in that context. 16 In other words, discursive interpretation explores how ‘the ways in which we come to talk about and account
Introduction
7
for our own mental states actually provide the resources for managing and
experiencing the world and our own mental states’.17
Moving on from that, this study utilizes an abductive research strategy that
focuses on Pakistan. An abductive research strategy has often been described
as ‘inductive’; yet this largely misrepresents the complexity of the analytical task involved. Paralleling the inductive research strategy, it begins by observing the
social world and the social actors under investigation. However, the abductive
research strategy emphasizes the social actors’ construction of reality, their
ways of conceptualizing and giving meaning to their social world, their tacit
knowledge.18 This can only be accurately discovered from the accounts that the social actors provide. The reality of the social actors under investigation, the
method and manner in which they have constructed and interpreted their own
activities, is embedded in their discourse. Hence, the researcher has to enter
their world in order to discover the motives and reasons that accompany
social activities. ‘The task, then, is to re-describe these motives and actions, and the situations in which they occur … Individual motives and actions have to be
abstracted into typical motives for typical actions in typical situations. These
social scientific typifications provide an understanding of the activities and
may, then, become ingredients in more systematic explanatory accounts’.19
Clearly, the abductive research strategy is based on interpretation and
understanding, utilizing interpretive ontological and epistemological elements
such as critical theory. Such a strategy involves constructing a theory that is
derived from social actors’ language, meanings and theories, or is grounded in
everyday activities. Abduction is the process used to produce social scientific
accounts of social life by drawing on the concepts and meanings used by
social act
ors, and the activities in which they engage. According to Reichertz,
its particular strength is it being both logical and innovative in its research
strategy. On the one hand it is a logical inference and, thereby, reasonable and
scientific; on the other hand, it extends into the realm of profound insight and
therefore generates new knowledge.20
Lastly, in this book, the research method utilized involves critical discourse
analysis for secondary data and interviews for primary data. Critical discourse
analysis employs interdisciplinary techniques of text analysis to look at how
texts construct representations of the world, social identities and social rela-
tionships.21 In addition, critical discourse analysis refers to the use of various Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 18:26 09 January 2017
procedures for the study of textual practice and language use as social and
cultural practices.22 Overall, critical discourse analysis builds from three broad theoretical orientations:
First, it draws from post-structuralism the view that discourse operates
laterally across local institutional sites, and that texts have a constructive
function in forming up and shaping human identities and actions.
Second, it draws from Bourdieu’s sociology the assumption that actual
textual practices and interactions with texts become ‘embodied’ forms of
‘cultural capital’ with exchange value in particular social fields.23 Third, it
8
Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture
draws from neo-Marxist cultural theory the assumption that these dis-
courses are produced and used within political economies, and that they
thus produce and articulate broader ideological interests, social formations
and movements within those fields. 24
The presupposition of critical discourse analysis is that institutions or individuals teaching texts such as the Qur’an, Prophetic sayings and written or oral accounts
of the Rashidun era act as gatekeepers for mastery of these expansive resources. In
other words, they shape the ideological fabric of the listener or reader and incul-
cate certain ‘ideals’. With that thought, it may be argued that the Qur’an itself is a sort of institution that sets forth a mechanism towards acquiring knowledge,
imparting certain values, beliefs and ‘ideals’ and, consequently, which governs
relations between individuals pertinent to political life. Nonetheless, the task of
critical discourse analysis is both deconstructive and reconstructive. In its
deconstructive moment it aims to elucidate those principles, ideology and
insights pertinent to the political realm, outlining the parameters of power rela-
tions in everyday life. On the other hand, its reconstructive moment involves the
formulation of a coherent understanding of what those political principles imply.
More clearly, the principal unit of analysis for critical discourse analysis is the
text. Texts are taken to be social actions, meaningful and coherent instances of
spoken and written language use.25 Yet their shape and form is not random or arbitrary. Specific text types or ‘genres’, as Luke refers to them, serve conventional social uses and functions. That is, particular kinds of texts attempt
to ‘do things’ in social institutions, with predictable ideational and material
effects.26 This, precisely, is what the Qur’an, Prophetic sayings and Rashidun era attempt to do. In that regard, these sources of legitimacy in Muslim
society, even though immutable, are still dynamic and continually subject to
reinvention by being affiliated with particular conventionalised discourses as a
part of its civilizational directive.
This study of subject positions of the text, such as the Qur’an, has focused on
selective traditions of political principles or ‘ideals’ of governance. In addition to describing the cultural assumptions expressed in the text macrostructure, analysis
can describe particular epistemological directives and attitudes towards the
acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. In this study, this inclusion of
epistemology was precisely because of it being expressed in the textual macro-
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structure and has the ideological effect of instilling a certain preference in the
manner in which one approaches knowledge. Thus, critical discourse analysis
can document how the world is portrayed as in Qur’anic epistemology and
how political actions are represented, sanctioned and critiqued in the Qur’an,
Prophetic sayings and Rashidun era.
Motivation for this book
The manner in which contemporary society chooses to interact with the
‘Other’ will be shaped by the outcome of an edgy struggle between advocates
Introduction
9
of a ‘Clash’ or ‘Dialogue’ of civilizations. The champions of ‘dialogue’ aim at
ending notions of exclusivity, an ‘us and them’ mentality, and the singular,
uncompromising possession of ‘Truth’. By acknowledging diversity in society as
a blessing, not an aberration, a healthy mindset develops, which aims to work
together under mutually agreed frameworks. Actually, the fate of our modern
world rests in a ‘balance of culture’, a harmony among the different peoples,
neither suffocating dissent nor encouraging absolute relativism.27 And this becomes increasingly important as the ‘world is moving toward a civilizational
paradigm’ and our attitudes toward the ‘other’ will affect the very fabric of
the coming era. 28
Therefore, in recognition of that thinking, a new platform for a Dialogue of
Civilizations offers an alternative to a fearful, violent and exclusivist world
order.29 Reputable international personalities like the late Vaclav Havel, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the late Nelson Mandela,
Prince Charles of Great Britain, and Hamza Yusuf, Tariq Ramadan, Sayyid
Syeed and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have been pushing, in their own ways,
for precisely this kind of dialogue. Clearly, for people of good will the idea of
dialogue lies at the heart of the human condition with the need to reach out
in our shared space. For Muslims, the concept of dialogue is ‘foundational’ in
Muslim ‘sources of legitimacy’. In the Holy Qur’an, God mentions that He
‘created the different nations and tribes so that they may know one another’.30
Also, it is mentioned in the Qur’an that ‘among His signs is the creation of
the heavens and earth and the differences of your languages and colours’. 31
Of course, ‘signs’ are meant to remind us of His Magnificence and Majesty,
not turn us scornfully away. In this book, the analysis aims to recognize that
attitude towards diversity as wholeheartedly supported by the authentic
‘sources of legitimacy’ in Islam.
In its place, there are those who insist that a ‘clash’ between civilizations
is inevitable and proffer a caricatured image of Islam as their justification. It is here that the ostensible conflict between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’ is presented
as a continuation of a historically threatening Islamic civilization. 32 Yet this menacing depiction that paints Muslims as the monolithic ‘Other’ and the
exact opposite of ‘us’ is unsophisticated. Huntington, in his contentious literary
work The Clash of Civilizations
, encourages a renewal of the derogatory
‘other’. His hypothesis is that ‘civilizational identity’ will provide the impetus
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for conflicts in the contemporary world. Among several civilizations, ‘Islam and
the West’ receives the lion’s share of his attention. Unfortunately, simplification
of enormous entities such as ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ are brazenly utilized
without much regard for thoughtful analysis. Certainly, he does not have
‘much time to spare for internal dynamics and the plurality of every civilization,
or for the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures concerns the
definition or interpretation of each culture, or for the unattractive possibility
that a great deal of demagoguery and downright ignorance is involved in
presuming to speak for a whole religion or civilization’.33 Similarly, he tries to make ‘civilizations’ and ‘identities’ into sealed-off, shutdown, and impermeable
10
Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture
entities that have been purged of the countless currents and counter-currents
that animate human history. These historical currents contain imperial con-
quests as well as exchange. Hence, it may be convenient to ignore factors that
promote dialogue between civilizations, but it is not rigorous scholarship to
do so. Labels like ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ are often misleading and this shabby
form of compartmentalization ‘doesn’t make the supposed entities easier to
see; rather, it speaks to how much simpler it is to make bellicose statements
for the purpose of mobilizing collective passions than to reflect, examine, and
sort out what it is we are dealing with in reality; the interconnectedness of
innumerable lives, “ours” as well as “theirs”’. 34
By craftily calling for the United States and European countries to ‘achieve
greater political, economic, and military integration … encourage “Westernisa-
tion” of Latin America … restrain development of the conventional and uncon-
ventional military power of Islamic and Sinic countries … and maintain Western
technological and military superiority over other civilizations,’ Huntington’s for-
Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture Page 4