Journal of Law and Religion 36, no. 2 (2021): 304–307 © The Author(s), 2021.

Published by Cambridge University Press on

behalf of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University
doi:10.1017/jlr.2021.26

BOOK REVIEW SYMPOSIUM

“secularity without secularism”: the case

of pakistan

A Secular Age beyond the West: Religion, Law and the State in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
Edited by Mirjam Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2018. Pp. 440. $120.00 CAD (cloth); $34.99 CAD (paper); $28.00 USD (digital). ISBN:
9781108417716.

KEYWORDS: Pakistan, secularism, fundamentalism, extremism, blasphemy, identity

Few questions could be more relevant to Pakistan’s history than those grappling with religion’s role
in public life. Indeed, they speak to the very heart of the justication for the modern state of
Pakistan, as seen in the chapter in A Secular Age beyond the West on Pakistan by political scientist
Christophe Jaffrelot, who suggests that Pakistan presents a case of “secularity without secularism”
(“Secularity without Secularism in Pakistan: The Politics of Islam from Sir Syed to Zia,” 152–84).
Most commentaries and scholarship on Pakistan analyze the Islamic Republic from either the
lens of Muslim nationalism or religious fundamentalism—with a general presumption that the
country has swung from “secularist” to “extremist” impulses in ts and starts. But the use of
terms matters—and what one may colloquially understand to be “secular” or “fundamentalist”
may be ill-tted to reect the deeper and wider realities of a polity, especially among the societies
of South Asia.
Drawing on the insights of Charles Taylor in A Secular Age,1 Jaffrelot keenly engages with the
terms of the debate, and in so doing, posits a novel (albeit, as yet unchallenged) thesis seldom
explored in the case of Pakistan: a nation preoccupied with religious identity—and thereby seem-
ingly reecting a type of religious fundamentalism—may, in fact, be grappling with a form of sec-
ularity that may never lead to secularism. In extending Taylor’s construct of secularism, Jaffrelot
gets much correct for what he cogently chronicles as the “politics of Islam” in Pakistan, but, ulti-
mately, one is left questioning whether what he describes as an “alternative form of secularity” is,
in fact, nothing but a euphemistic label for what is decidedly an anti-secular governance model
(155).
Jaffrelot correctly traces the trajectory of Pakistan to the development of Muslim separatism in
South Asia during the nineteenth century. Relying on a distinction rst drawn by South Asian
scholar Ashis Nandy—that the Muslim separatist movement emphasized “religion as ideology”
above “religion as faith”2—Jaffrelot posits that famed Indian Muslim politician Muhammad Ali
Jinnah founded Pakistan based on “a territorialized and communitarian version of Islam” steeped
in identity politics (155). Nationalism, Jaffrelot contends, was the catalyst for the birth of Pakistan,
which, at the time, was synonymous with Islam. This is a crucial distinction for Jaffrelot because he

1 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).
2 Ashis Nandy, “The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance,” in Mirrors of Violence:
Communities, Riots and the Survivors in South Asia, ed. Veena Das (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1990), 69–93, at 77.

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 a secular age beyond the west

argues that the primacy of “religion as ideology” formed the basis for Pakistan’s secularization pro-
cess (160). But there is at least one problem with this construct. Jaffrelot assumes that Pakistan’s
founding relegated Islamic beliefs secondary to a national identity, which is not necessarily true.
The “religion as belief” impulse still held up during Pakistan’s secularization process. In an effort
to redene Islamic governance, Jinnah and those he appointed would often square the birth of a
nation state within the box of Islamic theology.
For example, shortly after Muslims fought for an independent Pakistan, the United Nations
General Assembly fought to construct a universal norm for protecting freedom of religion with
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), passed in 1948. During a drafting session
of the UDHR that year, representatives from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan quarreled as to whether
freedom of conscience and freedom to change one’s religion, as outlined in Articles 18 and 19 of
the UDHR, were recognized under Islamic law (or the shari’a). The Saudi representative vehemently
opposed the inferred right to change one’s religion under shari’a, calling the articles a product of
Western thinking. Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, the Pakistani representative to the session and
Pakistan’s rst foreign minister, hailed the adoption of the articles as an “epoch-making event” and
considered them entirely consistent with Islam’s emphatic denunciation of compulsion in religion.
Reasserting Jinnah’s ideals, Khan exclaimed to the General Assembly: “Pakistan was an ardent
defender of freedom of thought and belief and of all the freedoms listed in [Article 18]. . . . [F]or
the Pakistani delegation, the problem had a special signicance as some of its aspects involved
the honour of Islam. . . . [T]he Moslem religion had unequivocally claimed the right to freedom
of conscience and had declared itself against any kind of compulsion in matters of faith or religious
practices.”3 Nevertheless, Jaffrelot’s broader point about the incubation of a secularity model in
Pakistan more attuned to Taylor’s Secularity I holds true, at least until 1953 (163–64).
Jaffrelot also correctly diagnoses the rapid erosion of Jinnah’s governance model in Pakistan
(167). Here, though, Jaffrelot underemphasizes the grip and reach of the ideology of Abul Ala
Maudoodi and the Majlis-e-Ahrar group that stood alongside Jamaat-e-Islami—the combination
of which was arguably the greatest ever threat to secularization in Pakistan. Indeed, it was
Maudoodi who sought to unify Pakistani Muslims under the common cause of excommunicating
Ahmadi Muslims from Pakistan, an objective eventually achieved by Pakistan’s Second Amendment
to its Constitution, redening “Muslim” to exclude Ahmadis, in 1974. Justices Muhammad Munir
and Malik Rustam Kiyani authored a seminal report (the so-called Munir Report) that examined
the existential battle between secularism and fundamentalism by exploring the root causes of the
disturbances in Punjab that led to the imposition of martial law in 1953.4 The report arguably
remains the most important document grappling with the conuence of religion and state in
Pakistan. A close reection of that report helps explain why the Maudoodian ideology—which
grew rather than receded after his arrest—ultimately led to the weaponization of Pakistan’s
Constitution and criminal legal code against religious minorities, especially those perceived as a
threat to majority Sunni Islam. These crucial links, which Jaffrelot only marginally explores,
explain just how far Pakistan veered from its foundational model closest to Taylor’s Secularity I.
Jaffrelot’s most critical insight is his recognition of the deleterious effect of inserting a denition
of “Muslim” in the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan and Zulkar Ali Bhutto’s subsequent effort to

3 As quoted in David Little, John Kelsay, and Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, Human Rights and the Conict of Cultures:
Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 36–
37.
4 Mohammad Shoaib Adil, Munir Inquiry Report: Report of the Court of Inquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II of
1954 to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (Lahore: Nia Zamana Publications, 2007).

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 book review symposium

support a constitutional amendment declaring Ahmadis as non-Muslim (171–72). Jaffrelot cor-

rectly opines that “by precluding equal recognition of different schools of thought with Islam,”
Bhutto “sealed the fate of secularism as dened by Taylor” (172). Pakistan is the only
Muslim-majority country in the word to dene who is or is not a Muslim for purposes of its
Constitution—this has remained true for almost fty years. Article 260 (the denitional clause)
is not just problematic for Ahmadis—it is the principal culprit for sectarian conict in Pakistan.
The moment Pakistan injected a denition of Muslim in its Constitution, it created and fueled
an environment where Muslim groups would compete with each other to claim Islam’s hegemony.
The decision to inject a denition incubated sectarianism, tribalism, and interreligious violence.
Indeed, militants committed a signicant number of recent mass killings and atrocities in
Pakistan to preserve Islam’s integrity and the denition of Muslim in Pakistan’s constitution.
Jaffrelot is correct that a secularist (Bhutto) sealed the fate of secularism in Pakistan. But Bhutto
did not presage an “alternative form of secularity” (153); rather, he ensured the ascendancy of a
religious movement to preserve Sunni Islam.
Jaffrelot’s analysis of the so-called Islamization of Pakistan captures a number of salient
points relating to scal, educational, and judicial reforms. Though Jaffrelot accurately distills
several examples of the ways that Zia ul Haq injected Islam in various political matters, he
argues that Zia nevertheless pursued a statist agenda that continued to dene Islam “in
terms of collective identity at the expense of its religious content” (180). But it was precisely
the religious content of many of these reforms that drove Zia’s policies. The prime example
is one Jaffrelot only alludes to in passing: the promulgation and enforcement of Pakistan’s anti-
blasphemy laws.
Zia ensured that Pakistan used its Criminal Code to prohibit and punish blasphemy. Blasphemy
in Pakistan broadly refers to any spoken or written representation that directly or indirectly out-
rages the religious sentiments of Muslims. Five of Pakistan’s current penal code provisions punish
blasphemy. As Jaffrelot cites (181), the most notorious of these laws is a fty-word Penal Code
Ordinance (called Section 295-C): “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible rep-
resentation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, deles the sacred
name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) shall be punished with death, or impri-
sonment for life, and shall also be liable to ne.” Based on this remarkably broad language, virtu-
ally anyone can register a blasphemy case against anyone else in Pakistan, and the accused can face
capital punishment. Most critically, Section 295-C is a crime based entirely on the religious content
of the speech or act.
Two of the ve anti-blasphemy laws explicitly target by name the activities of Ahmadis. These
two laws are part of what is known as Zia’s Martial Law “Ordinance XX,” which amended
Pakistan’s Penal Code and Press Publication Ordinance Sections 298-B and 298-C, to charge
Ahmadis for “indirectly or directly posing as a Muslim.” Here, again, the explicit impetus for
Ordinance XX is the religious content of the speech or act. Pakistani police have destroyed
Ahmadi translations of the Qur’an and banned Ahmadi publications, the use of any Islamic termi-
nology on Ahmadi wedding invitations, the offering of Ahmadi funeral prayers, and the displaying
of the Kalima (the principal creed of a Muslim) on Ahmadi gravestones. In addition, Ordinance XX
prohibits Ahmadis from declaring their faith publicly, propagating their faith, building mosques, or
making the call for Muslim prayers. In short, virtually any public act of worship, devotion or prop-
agation by an Ahmadi can be treated as a criminal offense for “posing as a Muslim,” punishable by
ne, imprisonment, or death.
Just a few years after the laws were passed, the Federal Shariat Court (the highest religious court
in Pakistan created by Zia) was asked to rule whether Ordinance XX was contrary to the

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 a secular age beyond the west

injunctions of the Qur’an and Sunnah (the practice of Prophet Muhammad). The court, in the case
Mujibur Rahman v. Government of Pakistan, after an extensive analysis of Islamic authorities,
upheld the validity of Ordinance XX––and ruled that parliament had acted within its authority
to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Ordinance XX, the court maintained, merely prohibited
Ahmadis from “calling themselves what they [were] not,” namely Muslims.5 That decision remains
the primary source of legitimacy for Pakistan’s leaders to justify continued execution and enforce-
ment of Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws under threat of capital punishment.
Zia ensured a content-driven application of criminal speech codes. Contrary to Jaffrelot’s sug-
gestion (180), there can be no real ulterior secular purpose for Zia to criminalize perceived insults
to Islam. Indeed, Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy penal code sections are a prime specimen of Zia’s anti-
secular governance, the legacy of which persists today. Jaffrelot also inexplicably stops short of
evaluating a large amount of history post-Zia that could readily inform his thesis in both helpful
and harmful ways.
For example, the eras of Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf, Asif Zardari, and Imran Khan each
contain relevant historic markers that illuminate the politics of “religion as identity” and its impact
on secularity without secularism in Pakistan. In 2002, then president Musharraf eliminated Zia’s
separate electorate regime, in place for several decades, and thereby restored the full, fair, and uni-
versal right to vote in Pakistan. But only a few months after enacting this action, he rescinded it only
as it pertained to Ahmadis, ensuring they remain deprived of their right to vote without disavowing
their Muslim identity, a move that remains intact today. Thus, between the horses of extremism and
secularism, Pakistan remained trampled underfoot, lending further credence to Jaffrelot’s analytical
framework. Conversely, current prime minister Imran Khan’s persistent invocation of a return to
the era of Prophet Muhammad under the Charter of Medina in his various public addresses sug-
gests a reintroduction of “religion as belief” in mainstream Pakistani politics and governance—a
fact that complicates Jaffrelot’s description of a Secularity IV (153–54).
Ultimately, Jaffrelot’s analysis raises the question as to whether Pakistan will invariably be mired
in religious extremism dressed up in the garb of pseudo-secularity. A possible escape hatch would
be for Pakistan to reimagine what it means to be a citizen of Pakistan and what it means to protect
the fundamental rights of this citizenry. Perhaps citizenship can transcend both “religion as belief”
and “religion as ideology.” Perhaps citizenship can become the minimum political safeguard to
revitalize the secularity that dened Pakistan’s own founding until 1953. For all his skepticism,
Jaffrelot leaves room for optimism.

Amjad Mahmood Khan

Lecturer in Law, University of California Los Angeles Law School

5 Mujibur Rahman v. Gov’t of Pakistan, (1985) 2 SD (FSC) 382, 473 (Pak.).

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