Within three months of taking power, General Zia coerced Pakistan’s judiciary into approving his extra-constitutional coup d’état and his decision to hold the constitution in abeyance. Basing its judgment on the doctrine of necessity, the court gave Zia broad powers to make new laws and even to amend the constitution. A military regime lacking a constitutional basis had succeeded in creating the legal fiction of constitutionality. Jamaat-e-Islami and others working with Zia ul-Haq could now argue that they were still operating under a constitutional framework.
During his first two years in power Zia ul-Haq publicly maintained the image of his regime as an interim arrangement pending elections. During his first weeks in power, however, Zia promulgated military rules for civil conduct “more thorough and comprehensive than those issued by previous martial law governments.” In September 1977, in the middle of the campaign for the election scheduled by Zia for October, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested on the charge of conspiring to murder a political opponent. The charges stemmed from an assassination bid three years earlier that had resulted in the death of the father of a PPP dissident member of Parliament. Religious parties and the Muslim League celebrated Bhutto’s arrest and at their political rallies started demanding his execution.
Bhutto’s trial was dragged through the courts for more than eighteen months, but Zia ul-Haq had already decided to portray the man he had overthrown as an evil genius. Islamist media joined Zia in a propaganda campaign similar to that unleashed against Bhutto during the 1970 elections by Major General Sher Ali Khan. Zia ul-Haq’s friend, Abdul Qayyum, has since written that Zia asked him to start preparing a white paper on Bhutto’s “misdeeds” in October 1977, within days of Bhutto’s arrest and well before he had been convicted. Although Abdul Qayyum did not write the white paper, a four-volume white paper was published before Bhutto’s execution in April 1979. The volume on alleged election irregularities alone comprised 405 pages, with 1,044 pages of appendix. During the run-up to Bhutto’s execution, state-run radio and television ran a series titled Zulm ki Dastanein (Tales of Oppression). Islamist newspapers and magazines ran excerpts from the white paper, subsidized by generous advertisements from public sector enterprises.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was convicted of murder by the Lahore High Court in a trial of dubious legality. After confirmation of the conviction by the reconstituted Supreme Court, Bhutto was executed in April 1979. The Jamaat-e-Islami was part of Zia ul-Haq’s cabinet during the crucial period of Bhutto’s trial and execution, and the party’s nominee held the crucial portfolio of information minister. Jamaat-e-Islami joined Zia’s cabinet when Zia, claiming that political participation in the government was necessary to pave the way for general elections, included members of the PNA in government one year after the coup d’état. In fact, the inclusion of the PNA in the cabinet was designed to deflect the blame for Bhutto’s execution from the military and to share it with Bhutto’s opponents.
The PNA remained in government for almost a year. During this period, the Jamaat-e-Islami controlled ministries that allowed it to expand its influence through patronage and provide employment to its younger cadres. In addition to information and broadcasting, Jamaat-e-Islami ministers were in charge of the ministries for production, and water, power, and natural resources. Zia ul-Haq also appointed a Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue, Professor Khurshid Ahmad, to head Pakistan’s Planning Commission and draw up plans for Islamizing the economy.
At the end of their year-long association with the government, Jamaat-e-Islami ministers complained that the entrenched bureaucracy wielded greater influence than they did. Zia ul-Haq realized that he had overestimated the Jamaat-e-Islami’s ability to run a modern Islamic state. After that year, in an effort to create his own hybrid Islamic system for Pakistan, Zia decided to cast a wider net to find Islamists of different persuasions. This opened the way for many clerics and Islamic spiritual leaders from all over the world to advise Zia ul-Haq. The general held dozens of conferences and seminars of Islamic scholars and spiritualists (mashaikh). He issued numerous decrees, some as banal as prohibiting urinals in public places (because the Prophet Muhammad advised against urinating while standing) and others with significant consequences, such as liberalizing visas for Muslim ulema and students from all over the world. The liberalization of visas for Muslim activists enabled Islamists from several countries to set up headquarters in Pakistan, circumventing restrictions on Islamist political activities in their own countries.
In 1979, Jamaat-e-Islami’s support for Bhutto’s execution was central to Zia ul-Haq’s plan to suppress any resistance from PPP supporters to Bhutto’s elimination. Zia ul-Haq met the Jamaat-e-Islami chief, Mian Tufail Muhammad, for ninety minutes the night before Bhutto was hanged. Jamaat-e-Islami members took to the streets to celebrate Bhutto’s death, which countered international criticism and domestic disapproval of the ruthless execution of the ruling general’s main political rival.
The Jamaat-e-Islami’s founder and spiritual leader, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, set the tone for his party’s relationship with Zia ul-Haq’s military regime by endorsing Zia’s initiatives for Islamization. Maulana Maududi described these steps as “the renewal of the covenant” between the government of Pakistan and Islam and also endorsed Zia’s demonization of Bhutto and the PPP by arguing if the PPP were allowed to run in a general election again, the country would face a debacle similar to the one witnessed when East Pakistan separated from West Pakistan. When Maulana Maududi died in September 1979, Zia ul-Haq expressed his admiration for him by attending his funeral.
Although Zia ul-Haq and the Jamaat-e-Islami clearly had a soft spot for each other and enjoyed a close relationship, their ambitions did not always converge. Zia recognized that the Jamaat-e-Islami’s base of support was relatively narrow, notwithstanding its impressive organization and its ability to mobilize its cadres. Moreover, the Jamaat-e-Islami was not the only religious political force in the country, and Zia ul-Haq wanted the support of other Islamic groups as well. Once the president declared his intention to Islamize Pakistan, he was confronted with several visions of what an Islamic state should look like. Zia ul-Haq also had to juggle the conflicts of interest between his parent institution, the military, and the various religious parties.
~~Pakistan:Between Mosque and Military -by- Husain Haqqani
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