page_title: Pakistan
section_title: Role of Islam in Pakistan
hierarchical_section_title: Pakistan / Role of Islam in Pakistan
caption_attribution_description: English: The Friday Prayers at the famous Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan
context_page_description: Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country with a population exceeding 212.2 million. It has the world's second-largest Muslim population. It is the 33rd-largest country by area, spanning 881,913 square kilometres. Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.
  The territory that now constitutes Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures and intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent. The ancient history involves the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and was later home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including Hindus, Indo-Greeks, Muslims, Turco-Mongols, Afghans and Sikhs.
context_section_description: Pakistan is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. The idea of Pakistan, which had received overwhelming popular support among Indian Muslims, especially those in the provinces of British India where Muslims were in a minority such as the United Provinces, was articulated in terms of an Islamic state by the Muslim League leadership, the ulama (Islamic clergy) and Jinnah. Jinnah had developed a close association with the ulama and upon his death was described by one such alim, Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, as the greatest Muslim after Aurangzeb and as someone who desired to unite the Muslims of the world under the banner of Islam.
  The Objectives Resolution in March 1949, which declared God as the sole sovereign over the entire universe, represented the first formal step to transform Pakistan into an Islamic state. Muslim League leader Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman asserted that Pakistan could only truly become an Islamic state after bringing all believers of Islam into a single political unit. Keith Callard, one of the earliest scholars on Pakistani politics, observed that Pakistanis believed in the essential unity of purpose and outlook in the Muslim world and assumed that Muslim from other countries would share their views on the relationship between religion and nationality.
  However, Pakistan's pan-Islamist sentiments for a united Islamic bloc called Islamistan were not shared by other Muslim governments, although Islamists such as the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Al-Haj Amin al-Husseini, and leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, became drawn to the country. Pakistan's desire for an international organization of Muslim countries was fulfilled in the 1970s when the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) was formed.
  The strongest opposition to the Islamist ideological paradigm being imposed on the state came from the Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan whose educated class, according to a survey by social scientist Nasim Ahmad Jawed, preferred secularism and focused on ethnic identity unlike educated West Pakistanis who tended to prefer an Islamic identity. The Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami considered Pakistan to be an Islamic state and believed Bengali nationalism to be unacceptable. In the 1971 conflict over East Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami fought the Bengali nationalists on the Pakistan Army's side.
  After Pakistan's first ever general elections the 1973 Constitution was created by an elected Parliament. The Constitution declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic and Islam as the state religion. It also stated that all laws would have to be brought into accordance with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah and that no law repugnant to such injunctions could be enacted. The 1973 Constitution also created certain institutions such as the Shariat Court and the Council of Islamic Ideology to channel the interpretation and application of Islam.
  Pakistan's leftist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto faced vigorous opposition which coalesced into a movement united under the revivalist banner of Nizam-e-Mustafa ("Rule of the Prophet") which aimed to establish an Islamic state based on Sharia laws. Bhutto agreed to some Islamist demands before being overthrown in a coup.
  In 1977, after taking power from Bhutto in a coup d'état, General Zia-ul-Haq, who came from a religious background, committed himself to establishing an Islamic state and enforcing sharia law. Zia established separate Shariat judicial courts and court benches to judge legal cases using Islamic doctrine. Zia bolstered the influence of the ulama (Islamic clergy) and the Islamic parties. Zia-ul-Haq forged a strong alliance between the military and Deobandi institutions and even though most Barelvi ulama and only a few Deobandi scholars had supported Pakistan's creation, Islamic state politics came to be mostly in favour of Deobandi (and later Ahl-e-Hadith/Salafi) institutions instead of Barelvi. Sectarian tensions increased with Zia's anti-Shia policies.
  According to a Pew Research Center (PEW) opinion poll, a majority of Pakistanis sup
caption: The Friday Prayers at the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore
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