sequently, those descriptive terms are used to explain the essence of political
culture, alluding to its political values. However, that allusion is misleading,
since what the ‘core’ precisely consists of, amounts to or how it may alter is
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left largely undefined. Therefore, this study proceeded to define that ‘core’, in
regards to Muslim polities, and labelled it as the ‘foundational’ aspect of Islamic
political culture. More clearly, the ‘foundational’ represents those aspects of
permanence in Islamic political culture and consists of deeply cherished political
ideals. Yet this articulation is only the first sphere of inquiry essential to
understand the complexity of Islamic political culture in Muslim polities.
Specifically, understanding it involves three spheres of inquiry: ‘foundational’
(what endures or should be), ‘contextual ’ (what is) and ‘individual ’ (the agent
for movement).
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These three spheres of inquiry are engaged in an ongoing triangular relation-
ship. In other words, this interplay involves the ‘foundational ’ political values – or,
‘the ideals’; the ‘contextual ’ in which those political values find depth, meaning
and expression, as in Pakistan – ‘the real’; and the ‘individual ’ by the method and manner that political leadership chooses to interact with both the ‘foundational’
and ‘contextual’.
The differing method and manner in which ‘individual’ political leaders, choose
to interact with the ‘foundational’ produces three variant political cultures:
‘traditionalist’, ‘secularist’ and ‘revivalist’. Amongst these variant political
culture types, both the ‘traditionalist’ and ‘secularist’ methods of interaction
are unable to achieve equilibrium. As a result, they both contribute towards
ideological and political instability. On the other hand, the ‘revivalist’ method
of interaction between the three spheres of inquiry produces a balance, with
the belief that the principle endures but the manner of its application is
dependent on space-time. Of course, the complexity of managing that requires
an enlightened ‘asabiyya’ or, as Toynbee would have it, ‘creative minority’,
capable of steering society in that direction.
Theoretical assertions
This book defined a profound internal ideological and, consequently, political
challenge confronting Muslim polities. That is the management of permanence
and change, expressed by the interplay between the ‘foundational’, the ‘con-
textual’ and the ‘individual’, thereby producing three variant political culture
types: traditionalist, secularist and revivalist. Actually, the manner in which this occurs goes to the heart of political instability in Muslim polities as each
variant typology confronts the others. Moreover, this characterization is not
specific to Pakistan, but rather applies to the entire Muslim heartland, and is
particularly relevant for the Middle East. As a matter of fact, in Muslim-majority
countries, through the process of several centuries of socialization, the ‘founda-
tional’ values permeate society. Volatility appears when new forms of learning,
or counter-epistemologies, are introduced into ‘contextual’ realities that starkly
contrast with the conventional enduring cultural component. This volatility is
further intensified when elites, or ‘individuals’, controlling the state enforce their
‘secularist’ or ‘traditionalist’ vision upon the rest of society. With that egregious Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 18:26 09 January 2017
imposition, the attitudinal condition of rebellion is brought forth and, if the
state’s repressive response is indiscriminate, brings about massive violence. In
other words, the findings of this book support Hafez’s analysis outlining the
causes of ‘why Muslims rebel?’ when unpopular governments brutally and
indiscriminately stifle opposition. 1 He eloquently argues that ‘Muslims rebel because they encounter an ill-fated combination of political and institutional
exclusion, on the one hand, and reactive and indiscriminate repression on the
other’.2 While that assertion is valid, the lurking ideological incoherence and consequent polarization is what this book suggests causes institutional exclusion,
secular state repression and reactive traditionalist counter-violence.
Conclusion
157
To clarify, this book commenced by analysing the concept of political culture
to seek therein the roots of political instability. Yet what was revealing was
that the term ‘political culture’ is defined in numerous ways dependant on its
usage. Furthermore, the concept itself was originally intended to promote the
modernization theory of development and notions of ‘cultural lag’.3 In other words, there was a strong Euro-centricity inherent in its norm, which impeded
its effectiveness in becoming an explanatory variable. This insight, however,
did not assist us in decoding a methodology through which to study, even
grasp, political culture in Muslim polities. It only revealed to us the dearth of
relevant literature and the necessity of exploring different processes to do
political culture research. During that exploration, our most salient finding
was in locating the ‘gap’ therein, which Inglehart discusses as the ‘enduring
cultural component that makes political life distinct for polities’.4
To further explain, a human being comes into a world of existing meanings,
types, roles, ‘formulae’, ‘stock of knowledge’ and ‘significant symbols’.5 That, then, shapes political life and makes it distinct. Yet those terms failed to tackle
‘how’ is it that one would go about and understand what they consist of in a given
polity? Therefore, this book ventured to define that ‘enduring cultural component’
that saturates Muslim polities. It did so by labelling it as the ‘foundational’ values, which provide the basis for understanding the entirety of Islamic political culture.
In other words, the ‘gap’ in political culture research was, precisely, the missing
explanation of what the ‘enduring cultural component’ would consist of.
Our analysis then proceeded to define that enduring cultural component,
or, as we stated, ‘foundational’ values, which deal with those patterns of behaviour, norms and cultural assumptions that together represent an aspect of permanence
and the core ideological and political platform of Islam. Clearly, these ‘foun-
dational’ values present a vision of where its society is meant to progress
towards. In other words, without knowing ‘who I am’ one is incapable of
understanding the entirety of political culture and concretizing it into political
institutions – ‘where I should go’. And, here, finding out ‘who I am’ involves
a phenomenological approach to political culture research. That, then, led us to
rationalize that the underlying enduring political values are to be found inter-
spersed between the Qur’an, the Prophetic sayings, the Khulafa-Rashidun era and
Qur’anic epistemology. Collectively, these four constituents represent the cor-
nerstone of Islamic theology – the Qur’an and Propheti
c sayings; the practical
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application of that theology in political society for Sunni orthodoxy – the
Khulafa-Rashidun; and the epistemological thread that weaves it all together.
Taking that together, from those constituents, this study extracted political
values that include placing sovereignty in God, but also in people as His
representatives on earth; Humanity is one and individuals are born of good
and sound nature; all individuals are born equal, irrespective of race or
gender with the right to own land; mutual consultation, consensus, and
inclusion are necessary for stability, in both private and public spheres; people
must choose their representatives; giving an oath of allegiance to political
leaders; leaders are accountable to the people and no one is above the law;
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Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture
Figure 9.1 This graph outlines the entire research and analytical scope of this study. It
begins with describing political culture research trends, leading to Islamic
political culture and its three spheres of inquiry. Then, it deconstructs each
of those spheres; foundational, contextual and individual.
leaders are the servants of the people they represent; and those who want lea-
dership should not have it. Certainly, that is not all. Still, what we have col-
lected from the ‘foundational’ values represent the political high classicalism
to which Islamic scholars such as Al-Farabi, Ibn Khaldun, Malik Bennabi
and Muhammad Iqbal, and a host of others, allude. It is, precisely, to this
high classicism that Muslim polities compare their current political structures
so as to measure discrepancies with regard to it. And in this discrepancy
resides the inherent tension that endures in Muslim polities. In support of
that, Wael Hallaq eloquently emphasizes, ‘as a world civilization, Islam
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developed a historically grounded paradigmatic moral-legal ethic that defined
its identity. Obviously, there can be no Islam, nor any specifically Islamic
moral-legal culture outside of history, for it is history and its forces and
circumstances that gave rise to this legal-moral identity. To be a Muslim
individual today is to be, in fundamental ways, connected with that Shari’a-
defined ethic, for it is this ethic that shaped what Islam is and has been …
There is no Muslim identity without this ethic’. 6 Thus, in other words, to suggest that contemporary Muslim identity can rid itself of this ethic, which permeated
it to the core, amounts to ‘claiming that citizens of Euro-America could still be
Conclusion
159
who they are but without their historical roots, without their socioeconomic
history, without their legal history, without their political history, and without the Enlightenment and its values’.7 Thus, in as much as the modern Western state and its citizen are the product of a historically determined phenomenon, the Muslim
identity of today is inextricably connected with a particular moral-legal ethic
that was historically determined by the supremely central values of the
Shari’a.8 Likewise, this book contends that in Muslim political life there exists a lurking and compelling cultural force that cannot be neglected, and that needs to
be thoroughly understood. Both traditionalists and secularists misunderstand,
albeit in different ways, that pervasive cultural force. Either, by romanticizing
imitation or ignoring it altogether, fails to grasp the dynamics of stability.
Concerning factors that inhibit accurately understanding Islam’s relationship
with politics, Eqbal Ahmed offers a wonderful insight by stating that the ‘field
of Islamic studies, strewn with ancient potholes and modern mines, is domi-
nated by apparently different but actually complementary adversaries – the
‘traditionalist’ ulama and the modern ‘orientalists’. Their methods are different;
so are their intentions. Yet, with few exceptions, both tend to view Islam’s
relationship to politics in fundamentalist and textual terms’.9 How so? Well, both misunderstand the separation between religion and politics in Islam,
hold an effectively stagnant view of Islam and interpret change as interfering
with religious orthodoxy. The interplay between the Westerners’ academic
orthodoxy and the ulama’s theological orthodoxy has set the terms for the
prevalent discourse on Islam. 10 Learning from that, this study argued that both the ‘traditionalist’ and ‘secularist’ political culture types exhibit similar
non-consensual and authoritarian power tendencies augmenting political
instability. One wishes to live in the past, the other wishes to bury it.
Therefore, in efforts to unravel the precise obstacles to political stability,
this book put forward its theory that the dynamic interplay between the
‘individual’, the ‘foundational’ and the ‘contextual’ explains the growth of
competing political culture typologies. This contest of supremacy is ongoing –
and, resultantly, produces an ‘activist and insurrectionary’ political climate.
Often, the Muslim heartland from Pakistan to Mauritania has been described
as lands of insolence, rebellion and dissidence. Eqbal Ahmed explains this
recurrence of insurrection and insolence, at least partly, by ‘the fact that
wherever Islam took hold, it had its origins in a counter-tradition, a dissident
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point of view’.11 ‘In many regions such as North Africa and Central Asia the spread of Islam was dialectically linked with social revolt. In other places,
such as South Asia, Islam’s egalitarian precepts and emphasis on social justice
(both widely violated in practice) offered an escape to the disinherited from
the harsh realities of oppression. In its exemplary form, Islam is a religion of
the oppressed’. 12 Advancing from that, this book offers a slightly different explanation, arguing that insurrectionary tendency is a manifestation of the
individuals reacting to the ideals and their absence in reality. The metaphy-
sical demands of those ideals – or, as we have labelled it, the permanent
‘foundational’ values, and their application or lack thereof in reality – the
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Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture
contextual, is what motivates rebellion. This was alluded to by Eqbal Ahmed
when he states that:
For centuries a complementary tension, creative in its impact on society and
individuals had existed between particularist and universalist loyalties and
loci of Muslim political life. Typically, a Muslim held two sets of identity:
one – immediate, social and spatially particular; the other – historical,
ideological, cultural and global. Almost all Muslims lived in intensely
community-orientated societies, which, paradoxically, eschewed isolation.
The paradox had a political dimension. The interests and demands of
local authority – that is, the extended family, tribe, city, guild and ethnic and
linguistic group – in principle, competed with the universal expectations
of the ‘Ummah’, the vast Islamicate, that is, the worldwide community of
people who embrace the te
achings of the Holy Qur’an and practise Islam. 13
In other words, the stability of Muslim political life has largely depended on
the extent to which these complementary tensions are reconciled and the
achievement of such reconciliation has been a preoccupation of politics in
Islamic civilization.
Applying the ‘foundational’ values
Here, it is, in efforts to examine the practical applicability of those previously
stated theoretical assertions, this book went on to investigate the expression of
those foundational values, and the role of rival political culture typologies, in
Pakistan. And it did so, initially, by exploring the interplay of religion and
society, the Pakistan movement for self-determination and the eventual creation
of a new nation-state. In essence, Islam’s relationship with politics began on a
unique syntheses between the sacred and secular, which are often misconstrued
in absolutist terms. The Prophet Muhammad who was persecuted in Mecca
became, in Medina, both the spiritual and temporal head of state. 14 The factor of territoriality was of secondary importance. Of primary importance
was the idea of the formation of a ‘faith-centric community’, or ‘ummah’,
based on the interconnectedness, togetherness, or unity of the world, truth
and, ultimately, on the unity of God.15 Notwithstanding that, the establishment Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 18:26 09 January 2017
of the first political order of Muslims in Medina coincided with their political
domination and empowerment.16 Therefore, leadership in Islam attempts to be both spiritual and temporal. The ruler, according to Qur’anic exegesis, was
a spiritual leader in that he was bound by his commitments to God and,
thereby, to people. Also, the ruler was secular in that he was concerned with
the sociopolitical and economic well-being of the masses.17
Furthermore, by analysing the formative phase of the Pakistan movement,
three leadership types, along with their corresponding political culture variants,
were clearly demarcated based on their interaction with ‘foundational’ values
in their ‘contextual’ realities. Simply put, and to reiterate, the typologies are,
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