Islam in Pakistan: Encyclopedia II - Islam in Pakistan - Islam in Pakistani Society

Islam in Pakistan - Islam in Pakistani Society

In 713 CE, the Umayyad dynasty sent an Muslim Arab army led by Muhammad bin Qasim and it conquered Pakistan from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea. The the arrival of the Arab Muslims to the provinces of Sindh and Punjab set the stage for the geographic boundaries of the modern state of Pakistan and formed the foundation for Islamic rule which quickly spread across much of South Asia. Following the rule of various Islamic empires, including the Ghaznavid Empire, the Ghorid kingdom, and the Delhi Sultanate, the region was controlled by the Mughals from 1526 until 1739. The Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and sufis flocked from the rest of the Muslim world to Islamic Sultanate in South Asia. The Muslim Sufi missionaries played a pivotal role in converting the millions of native people to Islam. As in other areas where it was introduced by Sufis, Islam to some extent syncretized with pre-Islamic influences, resulting in a religion traditionally more flexible than in the Arab world. Two Sufis whose shrines receive much national attention are Data Ganj Baksh (Ali Hajweri) in Lahore (ca. eleventh century) and Shahbaz Qalander in Sehwan, Sindh (ca. twelfth century).

The Muslim poet-philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal first proposed the idea of a Muslim state in the subcontinent in his address to the Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930. His proposal referred to the four provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and the NorthWest Frontier--essentially what would became the post-1971 boundary of Pakistan. Iqbal's idea gave concrete form to the "Two Nations Theory" of two distinct nations in the subcontinent based on religion (Islam and Hinduism) and with different historical backgrounds, social customs, cultures, and social mores.

Islam was thus the basis for the creation and the unification of a separate state, but it was not expected to serve as the model of government. Mohammad Ali Jinnah made his commitment to secularism in Pakistan clear in his inaugural address when he said, "You will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State." This vision of a Muslim majority state in which religious minorities would share equally in its development was questioned shortly after independence. The debate continues amid questions of the rights of Ahmadis (a small group known to be outside the pale of Islam according to the teachings and tenets of all branches of Islam, both Sunni and Shia), issuance of identity cards denoting religious affiliation, and government intervention in the personal practice of Islam.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Islam in Pakistani Society", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki