With no visible consensus over the terms of “Islam” – whether as faith, culture or ideology – the resolution of Pakistan’s identity and its putative relation to Islam, remains elusive.
Source/Credit: The Conversation
By Farzana Shaikh | May 6, 2018
“A young Pashtun who won’t keep quiet”. This is how Times of India has recently described a 26-year-old man from a Pashtun tribe, commonly found in north-western Pakistan. Manzoor Pashteen has been active in denouncing the Pakistan army’s exactions during the Afghanistan war and its role in the reported disappearance of thousands of people from Pashtun clans. Over the weekend, millions rallied in Lahore, defying the authorities and the army, which they accused of collusion with Islamic extremist groups.
Why is Manzoor Pashteen’s voice echoed by so many others in Pakistan today? Perhaps because the country has often been misunderstood to be exclusively built upon a national Islamic identity, ignoring the multiculturality and divisive role of Islam in the definition of its national identity.
Pakistan emerged in August 1947 as the first self-consciously created Muslim state (and along with Israel as one of only two cases of religious nationalism in modern times).
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