Imran Khan came to the campus in the face of ‘stay-away’ warnings from Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba. He was pushed and shoved and insulted and thrown to the keepers not long after. Did the Jamaat-i-Islami leadership know what was about to happen or was it a personal initiative of their student wing to assail the idol? While the first possibility is highly unlikely in the case of ‘the most organised political force in the country’, in either case it is as dangerous an occurrence for the Jamaat as it is for Imran Khan and his Justice Party. For the Jamaat is nothing without its ‘likeminded’ allies.
BORN-again Muslims are not good enough for Islamists. The sorry drama enacted on the Punjab University campus in Lahore on Nov 14 should solve the mystery for those emerging from the sidelines to claim the command of a team of motivated students in whose selection and training they have played no part.
"QUOTE"
The most important of the Jama‘at’s unions is the Islami Jami‘at-i Tulabah (IJT). Unlike the labor or the peasant unions, the IJT has no ideological justification. It does not galvanize support among any one social class. However, it has proved to be effective in battles against Jama‘at’s adversaries, it has diversified the party’s social base, and it has served as an effective means of infiltrating the Pakistani power structure. As the most important component of the Jama‘at’s organization, its workings and history both encapsulate and explain the place of organization in the Jama‘at and identify those factors which control continuity and change in its organization over time.
Central to contemporary Islamic revivalism is the role student organizations have in translating religious ideals into political power. The IJT, or the Jami‘at as it is popularly known, is one of the oldest movements of its kind and has in its own right been a significant and consequential force in Pakistani history and politics. In this capacity it has been central to the Islamization of Pakistan since 1947. It has served as a bulwark against the left and ethnic forces and has been active in national political movements such as those which brought down the Ayub Khan regime in 1969 and the Bhutto regime in 1977.
The roots of IJT can be traced to Mawdudi’s address before the Muslim Anglo-Oriental College of Amritsar on February 22, 1940, in which, for the first time, he alluded to the need for a political strategy that would benefit from the activities of a “well-meaning” student organization. Organizing Muslim students did not follow immediately, however. Not until 1945 did the Jama‘at begin to turn its attention to students. The nucleus organization was first established at the Islamiyah College of Lahore in 1945. The movement gradually gained momentum and created a drive for a national organization on university campuses, especially in Punjab, that would support the party. The IJT was officially formed on December 23, 1947, in Lahore by twenty-five students, most of whom were sons of Jama‘at members, and the newly formed organization held its very first meeting that same year. Other IJT cells were formed in other cities of Punjab, and notably in Karachi. It took IJT three to four years to consolidate these student cells into one organization centered in Karachi, and IJT’s constitution was not ratified until 1952.
IJT was initially conceived as a missionary (da‘wah) movement, a voluntary expression of Islamic feelings among students, given shape by organizers dispatched by the Jama‘at. Its utility then lay in the influence it could have on the education of the future leaders of Pakistan, which would help implement Mawdudi’s “revolution from above.” IJT was at the time greatly concerned with attracting the best and the brightest, and it used the exemplary quality of its members—in education as well as in piety—as a way to gain acceptance and legitimacy and increase its following. Although organized under the supervision of the Jama‘at, IJT was greatly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, which its members learned about from Sa‘id Ramazan, a brotherhood member living in Karachi at the time. Between 1952 and 1955, Ramazan helped IJT leaders formalize an administrative structure and devise an organizational strategy. The most visible marks of the brotherhood’s influence are IJT’s “study circle” and all-night study sessions, both of which were means of indoctrinating new members and fostering organizational bonds.
Initially IJT saw its primary concern as spreading religious propaganda on university campuses. In 1950 it launched its first journal, ‘Azm, in Urdu; it was soon followed by an English-language magazine, Student’s Voice, in 1951. IJT members were, however, as keenly interested in politics as in religious work. Hence, it was not long before they turned their attention to campus politics. Their involvement was not at the time an end in itself, but a means to check the growth of the Democratic Student Federation and the National Student Federation, the two left-wing student organizations on Pakistani campuses.
Throughout the 1950s, opposition to the left became the party’s propelling force. It was on a par with Islamic consciousness, to the extent that the student organization’s view, in large measure, took shape in terms of its opposition to Marxism. All issues put before the students were soon boiled down to choices between antithetical and mutually exclusive absolutes, Islam and Marxism. Although this was a missionary attitude inferred from the Jama‘at’s doctrinal teachings, in the context of campus politics it controlled thought and, hence, action. The conflict between Islam and Marxism soon culminated in actual clashes between IJT and leftist students, confrontations that further radicalized the IJT and increased its interest in campus politics. Egg tossing gradually gave way to more serious clashes, especially in Karachi and Multan. Antileftist student activism had become the IJT’s calling and increasingly determined its course of action. Once part of the Jama‘at’s holy community, it now began to look increasingly like a part of its political organization, hardly a source of comfort for the Jama‘at’s leaders, especially as between October 1952 and January 1953 leftist student groups clashed violently with police in the streets of Karachi, greatly radicalizing student politics. The tactics and organizational power of left-wing students in those months taught the IJT a lesson; it became more keenly interested in politics and began to organize more vigorously.
As radical politics spread in Karachi, the Jama‘at persuaded the IJT to temporarily move its operations elsewhere to keep it away from student politics.From that point on, Lahore was its base of operations, and the IJT found a voice in Punjab, Pakistan’s most important province. It recruited in the numerous colleges in that city and across the province, which proved to be fertile. In Lahore, IJT leaders could also be more closely supervised by Jama‘at leaders, and as a result the students became more involved in religious discussions and education. With increasing numbers of the organization’s directors elected from Punjab, in 1978–1979 the organization’s headquarters were permanently moved to Lahore.
Despite its moderating influence, the party proved unable to restrain the IJT’s drift toward political activism, especially after the anti-Ahmadi agitations of 1953–1954 pitted Islamic groups against the government. The Jama‘at had had a prominent role in the agitations and as a result had felt the brunt of the government’s crackdown. The IJT reacted strongly, especially after Mawdudi was tried for his part in the agitations by the government in 1954. The student organization had ceased to view itself merely as a training organization for future leaders of Pakistan; now it was a “soldiers brigade,” which would fight for Islam against its enemies—secularists and leftists—within the government as well as without. The pace of transformation from a holy community to a political organization was now faster in the IJT than in the Jama‘at itself. By 1955 Mawdudi had begun to be concerned with this new direction and the corrupting influence of politicization. However, the Jama‘at’s own turn to political activism following Machchi Goth obviated the possibility of restraining the IJT’s political proclivities, and by the mid-1960s it had abandoned all attempts at checking the IJT’s growing political activism and was instead harnessing its energies. With the tacit approval of Mawdudi, the students became fully embroiled in campus politics and to an increasing extent in national politics.
Between 1962 and 1967, locked in battle with Ayub Khan, the Jama‘at diverted the students from confrontation with the left and from religious work to opposition to Ayub Khan and his modernist religious policies. They stirred up unrest on Pakistani campuses, initially to oppose the government’s attempt to reform higher education then to protest against the concessions made to India at the end of the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. Their agitation led to clashes, arrests, and incarceration, which only served to institutionalize agitation—increasingly in lieu of religious work—as the predominant mode of organizational behavior; it also attested to the potency of student power.
Not surprisingly the IJT was pushed farther into the political limelight between 1969 and 1971 when the Ayub Khan regime collapsed and rivalry between the People’s Party and the secessionist Bengali party, the Awami League, resulted in civil war and the dismemberment of Pakistan. The IJT, with the encouragement of the government, became the main force behind the Jama‘at’s national campaign against the People’s Party in West Pakistan and the Awami League and Bengali secessionists in East Pakistan. The campaign confirmed the IJT’s place in national politics, especially in May 1971, when the IJT joined the army’s counterinsurgency campaign in East Pakistan. With the help of the army the IJT organized two paramilitary units, called al-Badr and al-Shams, to fight the Bengali guerrillas. Most of al-Badr consisted of IJT members, who also galvanized support for the operation among the Muhajir community settled in East Pakistan. Muti‘u’l-Rahman Nizami, the IJT’s nazim-i a‘la (supreme head or organizer) at the time, organized al-Badr and al-Shams from Dhaka University. The IJT eventually paid dearly for its part in the civil war. During clashes with the Bengali guerrillas (the Mukti Bahini), numerous IJT members lost their lives. These numbers escalated further when scores were settled by Bengali nationalists after Dhaka fell.
The fights with the left in West Pakistan and the civil war in East Pakistan meant that the IJT’s penchant for radical action had clearly eclipsed its erstwhile commitment to religious work. The party’s attitude toward its student wing was, by and large, ambivalent. Although pleased with its political successes, the Jama‘at nevertheless mourned its loss of innocence. Yet, despite its trepidations, the party in the end proved reluctant to alter the IJT’s course, for the students were delivering tangible political gains to the party, which had little else to work with. While Mawdudi may have, on occasion, chastised student leaders for their excesses, other Jama‘at leaders such as Sayyid Munawwar Hasan (himself a one-time leader of the IJT) and Khurshid Ahmad (again a former IJT leader) were far more tolerant. They saw the political situation before the Jama‘at at the end of Ayub Khan’s rule and during the Bhutto period (1968–1977) in apocalyptic terms and felt that the end thoroughly justified the means. The IJT’s power and zeal, especially in terms of the manpower needed to wage demonstrations, agitate, and conduct electoral campaigns, were too valuable for the Jama‘at to forego. Political exigencies thenceforth would act only to perpetuate the Jama‘at’s ambivalence and expedite the IJT’s moral collapse.
The Jama‘at’s ideological perspective, central as it has been to the IJT, has failed to keep the student organization in check. The IJT and the Jama‘at have been tied together by Mawdudi’s works and their professed ideological perspective, and IJT members are rigorously indoctrinated in the Jama‘at’s ideology. Fidelity to the Jama‘at’s reading of Islam is the primary criterion for membership and for advancement in the IJT. Jama‘at’s ideology is indelibly imprinted on the IJT and shapes the student organization’s worldview. But as strong as discipline and ideological conformity are among the core of IJT’s official members, they are not steadfast guarantees of obedience to the writ of the Jama‘at. Most of the IJT’s power comes from its far more numerous supporters and workers, who are not as well trained in the Jama‘at’s ideology, nor as closely bound by the IJT’s discipline. In 1989, for instance, while the number of members and sympathizers stood at 2,400, the number of workers was 240,000. The ability of the ideological link between the Jama‘at and the IJT to control the activities of the student organization is therefore tenuous. The political interests of the IJT often reflect the demands of its loosely affiliated periphery and can easily nudge the organization in independent directions; Nizami’s decision to throw the lot of the IJT in with martial rule in East Pakistan in 1971 is a case in point. In addition, organizational limitations have impeded the Jama‘at’s ability to cajole and subdue the IJT. The two are clearly separated by formal organizational boundaries, which create visible constraints in the chain of command between the them. Hence, while since 1976 a deputy amir of the Jama‘at has been assigned to supervise the IJT, his powers are limited to moral persuasion.
The IJT grew more independent of the Jama‘at, and the party more dependent on the students, with the rise to power of Bhutto in 1971. The Jama‘at had been routed at the polls that year, while the IJT, fresh from a “patriotic struggle” in East Pakistan, had defeated the People’s Party’s student union, the People’s Student Federation, in a number of campus elections in Punjab, most notably in the University of Punjab elections, and had managed to sweep the various campuses of Karachi. The IJT’s victories breathed new life and hope into the dejected Jama‘at, whose anguish over the student organization’s conspicuous politicization gave way for now to admiration and awe. The IJT had “valiantly stood up” to the People’s Party and won, parrying Bhutto’s political power. The victory had, moreover, been interpreted to mean that Mawdudi’s ideas could win elections, even against the left.
Following its victory, the IJT became a more suitable vehicle for launching anti–People’s Party campaigns than the Jama‘at, which as a defeated party was hard-pressed to assert itself. Unable to function as a mass-based party before the widely popular People’s Party, the Jama‘at increasingly pushed the IJT into the political limelight. The student organization soon became a de facto opposition party and began to define the parameters of its political control accordingly. When in August 1972 the people of Lahore became incensed over the kidnapping of local girls by Ghulam Mustafa Khar, the People’s Party governor of Punjab, for illicit purposes, they turned to the IJT. The organization obliged, raised the banner of protest, and secured the release of the girls by staging sizable demonstrations. The IJT performed its role so effectively that it gained the recognition of the government. IJT leaders were among the first to be invited to negotiate with Bhutto later that year, once the People’s Party had decided to mollify the opposition.
The IJT’s rambunctious style was a source of great concern to the People’s Party government. The student organization had not only served as the vehicle for implementing the Jama‘at’s political agenda but also was poised to take matters into its own hands and launch even more radical social action. While the Jama‘at advocated Islamic constitutionalism, the IJT had been advocating Islamic revolution. The tales of patriotic resistance and heroism in East Pakistan gave it an air of revolutionary romanticism. The myths and realities of the French student riots of 1968, which had found their way into the ambient culture of Pakistani students, provided a paradigm for student activism which helped the IJT articulate its role in national politics and to formulate a strategy for mobilizing popular dissent.
The IJT thus became the mainstay of such anti-People’s Party agitational campaigns as the nonrecognition of Bangladesh (Bangladesh namanzur) movement of 1972–1974, the finality of prophecy (khatm-i nubuwwat) movement and the anti-Ahmadi controversy of 1974, and the Nizam-i Mustafa (Order of the Prophet) movement of 1977. As a result, the IJT found national recognition as a political party and a new measure of autonomy from the Jama‘at. The organization also developed a penchant for dissent, which given that it was an extraparliamentary force, could find expression only in street demonstrations and clashes with government forces. The IJT soon adapted well to militant dissent and proved to be a tenacious opponent of the People’s Party—a central actor in the anti-Bhutto national campaign that eventually led to the fall of the prime minister in 1977. Success in the political arena took the IJT to the zenith of its power, but it also restricted it to being a consummate political entity.
Following the coup of July 1977, the IJT continued on its course of political activism. It collaborated closely with the new regime in suppressing the People’s Party, used government patronage to cleanse Pakistani campuses of the left, and served as a check on the activities of a clandestine paramilitary organization associated with the People’s Party, al-Zulfiqar, in urban centers. The IJT also played a critical role in mobilizing public opinion for the Afghan war, in which the organization itself participated wholeheartedly, producing seventy-two “martyrs” between 1980 and 1990.
Political activism, therefore, contrary to expectations, escalated rather than abated during the Zia period. It had proved to be an irreversible process, an end in itself that became detached from the quest for an Islamic order. As a result, even though Pakistan was moving toward Islamization, the pace of political activism only increased. The students became embroiled in a new cycle of violence, fueled by rivalry with other student organizations.
Campus violence by and against the IJT and continuous assassinations, which claimed the lives of some eighty student leaders between 1982 and 1988, began to mar the heroic image which the IJT had when it was in opposition to Bhutto.[46] Violence became endemic to the organization and was soon directed against the IJT’s critics off campus. The resulting “Kalashnikov culture,” efficacious as it had proved to be in waging political campaigns and intimidating opponents, was increasingly difficult for the Jama‘at either to control or to approve of. Nor was General Zia, determined to restore stability to Pakistan, willing to tolerate it.
Despite pressures from Zia, the Jama‘at was unable to control its student group. Zia therefore proceeded to ban all student union activities in February 1984, which led to nationwide agitation by the IJT. Mian Tufayl (then amir), following pleas from the general, interceded with the IJT, counseling patience, but to no avail. The IJT’s intransigence then began to interfere with the Jama‘at’s rapport with Zia and affect the party’s image. It was only when the IJT realized the extent of popular backlash against its activities, which translated into defeats in a number of campus elections between 1987 and 1991, that it desisted to some extent from violence on Pakistani campuses. The tempering of the IJT’s zeal was, however, merely a lull in the storm; the transformation of the student body into a militant political machine has progressed too far to be easily reversed.
The IJT’s central organization is modeled after the Jama‘at’s. At the base of its organizational structure are the supporters (hami), loosely affiliated pro-IJT students; next come the workers (karkun), the backbone of the IJT’s organization and its most numerous category; the friends (rafiq); the candidates for membership (umidvar-i rukniyat); and finally, the members (arkan). Only members can occupy official positions; the most important office is the nazim-i a‘la (supreme head/organizer). The organizational structure at the top is replicated at lower levels, producing a set of concentric circles which extend from the lowest unit to the office of nazim-i a‘la. Each IJT unit has its own nazim (head or organizer) elected by IJT members of that unit.
The first four layers of the IJT’s organizational structure have shura’s which are elected by IJT members of that unit. An IJT votary may participate in several elections for nazim or shura’ each year. For instance, he can vote in dormitory, campus, university, city, province, and national elections for nazim. The IJT’s activities and interorganization matters are supervised by the secretary-general (mu‘tamid-i a‘la), appointed by the nazim-i a‘la. Lower units of the IJT also have secretaries-general (mu‘tamids), who are selected by their respective nazims and the secretary-general of the higher unit. Each level of the IJT forms a self-contained unit and oversees the activities of the one below it. For instance, the command structure extends from the IJT’s national headquarters to the Punjab IJT, the Lahore IJT, the IJT of various universities in Lahore, the IJT of the campuses in each university, and finally the IJT of departments, classes, and dormitories in each university. On each campus, units monitor student affairs, campus politics, relations between the sexes, and the workings of university administration and faculty, at times acting as the de facto administrators of the university. The IJT regularly uses the university campus as its base of operations and utilizes university facilities such as auditoriums and buses for its purposes. Admission forms to the university are sold to applicants, generating revenue and control over the incoming students. The IJT uses strong-arm tactics to resolve the academic problems of its members or associates, provides university housing to them, and in some cases gains admission for them to the university.The IJT also has subsidiary departments for international relations, the press, and publications which deal with specific areas of concern and operate out of IJT headquarters.
This organizational structure is duplicated in the IJT’s sister organization, the Islami Jami‘at Talibat (Islamic Society of Female Students), which was formed at Jama‘at’s instigation in Multan in September 1969. This organization works closely and in harmony with the IJT, extending the power of the latter over university campuses. Most Talibat members and sympathizers, much like the IJT’s founding members, come from families with Jama‘at or IJT affiliation. Their ties to the Talibat organization are therefore strong, and as a result the requirements of indoctrination and ideological education are less arduous.
The principal problem with the IJT’s organizational setup is an absence of continuity, a fault which is inherent in any organization with revolving membership. Because they must be students, members remain with the organization for comparatively short periods of time, and leaders have limited terms in office. The nazim-i a‘la and other nazims, for instance, hold office for one year and can be elected to that office only twice. Since 1947 only fifteen nazim a‘las have held that title for as long as two years. The organization has therefore been led by twenty-nine leaders in forty-four years. To alleviate the problems produced by lack of continuity, the IJT has vested greater powers in its secretariat, where bureaucratic momentum assures a modicum of organizational continuity. Also significant in creating organizational continuity has been the IJT’s regional and all-Pakistan conventions, which have been held regularly since 1948. These gatherings
have given IJT members greater solidarity and an organizational identity.
All IJT associates from worker up attend training camps where they are indoctrinated in the Jama‘at’s ideological views and the IJT’s tactical methods. Acceptance into higher categories of organizational affiliation depends greatly on the degree of ideological conformity. To become a full-fledged member, candidates must read and be examined on a specific syllabus, consisting for the most part of Mawdudi’s works. All IJT associates are encouraged to collect funds for the organization through outside donations (i‘anat), which not only helps the IJT financially but also increases loyalty to the organization. Each nazim is charged with supervising the affairs of those in his unit as well as those in the subordinate units. IJT members and also candidates for membership meet regularly with their nazim, providing him with a diary known as “night and day” (ruz’u shab), in which every activity of the member or candidate for membership is recorded.
The logbook details academic activities, religious study, time spent in prayers, and hours dedicated to IJT work. The book is monitored closely, and gives the IJT total control over the life of its associates from the rank of friend up to that of member.
The strict requirements for membership and advancement in the IJT have kept its membership limited. Yet organizational discipline has surmounted any limitations on the IJT’s ability effectively to project power. Its accomplishments are all the more astounding when the actual numbers of the core members responsible for the organization’s vital political role in the 1970s and the 1980s are taken into consideration
2. Distribution of IJT Members, 1974–1992 Punjab Lahore Sind K
Karachi NWFP Baluchistan Total for Pakistan
Source: Jama‘at-i Islami.
1974
Members 82 20 62 40 25 6 175
Friends 881 150 676 350 270 65 1,892
1978
Members 134 38 102 80 41 10 287
Friends 762 106 584 425 233 56 1,635
1983
Members 236 34 131 90 63 20 450
Friends 1,588 190 553 417 284 75 2,500
1989
Members 274 42 200 110 100 10 584
Friends 844 129 616 339 308 30 1,800
1992
Members 256 50 143 107 106 8 414
Friends 2,654 314 1,260 1,403 657 64 3,698
The IJT has also extended its activity beyond the university campus. The circle of friends (halqah-i ahbab) has for a number of years served as a loosely organized IJT alumni association. The IJT has also more effectively extended its organizational reach into high schools, a policy initiated in the mid-1960s but which gathered momentum in the late 1970s, when the IJT reached the limits of its growth on university campuses. Further organizational expansion led the IJT to look to high schools for recruits and to reach the young before other student unions could. This strategy was particularly successful in universities where a large block of students came from particular regions through special quota systems. At the Engineering University of Lahore, for instance, the IJT was increasingly hard-pressed to compete with the ethnic appeal of the Pakhtun Student Federation for the support of students from the North-West Frontier Province. To solve the problem, in 1978–1979 it began recruitment in North-West Frontier Province high schools, creating a base of support among future students of the Engineering University before they arrived in Lahore, where they would come into contact with the Pakhtun Student Federation for the first time. The strategy was so effective that the Pakhtun Student Federation was compelled to copy it.
The IJT’s recruitment of high school students, a program they referred to as Bazm-i Paygham (celebration of the message), began in earnest in 1978. In the 1960s a program had existed for attracting high school students to the IJT, named Halqah-i Madaris (the school wing), but the Bazm-i Paygham was a more concerted effort. Magazines spread the message among its young audience and promoted themes of organization and unity through neighborhood and high school clubs. The project was named after its main magazine, Bazm-i Paygham (circulation 20,000). Additional magazines cater to regional needs. In Punjab the magazine was Paygham Digest (circulation 22,000); in North-West Frontier Province, Mujahid (circulation 8,000); and in Sind, Sathi (circulation 14,000). These journals emphasize not politics but religious education, so students can gain familiarity with the Jama‘at’s message and affinity with the IJT. Bazm-i Paygham has been immensely successful. Since 1983 the IJT has been recruiting exponentially more associates in high schools than in universities. The project has also benefited the Jama‘at; for many of those whom Bazm-i Paygham reaches in high schools never go to university and would not otherwise come into contact with the Jama‘at and its literature. More than a tactical ploy to extend the organizational reach of the IJT, this effort may prove to be a decisive means for expanding the social base of the Jama‘at and deepening the influence of the party on Pakistani society.
Although the IJT was modeled after the Jama‘at, it has transformed itself into a political organization at a much faster pace than the parent party. That the IJT relies more heavily on a periphery of supporters than the Jama‘at has sublimated its view of itself as a holy community in favor of a political organization to a greater extent. For that reason the IJT serves as a model for the Jama‘at’s development, and not vice versa.
While the Jama‘at’s membership has been drawn primarily from the urban lower-middle classes, the IJT has also drawn members from among small-town and rural people. Students from the rural areas are not only more keen on religious issues and more likely to identify with religious groups but are also more likely to be affected by the IJT’s operations on campuses than urban students are. The IJT controls university hostels and provides administrative and academic services, all of which are also more frequently used by rural and small-town students than by city dwellers. In essence, the IJT exercises a form of social control on campuses which brings these students into its orbit and under the Jama‘at’s influence.
The vagaries of Pakistani politics provide rural and small-town students with an incentive to follow the IJT’s lead. Religious parties—the Jama‘at is the most notable case in point—have since 1947 provided the only gateway for the middle and lower-middle classes, urban as well as rural, into the rigid and forbidding structure of Pakistani politics. Dominated by the landed gentry and the propertied elite through an intricate patronage system, political offices have generally remained closed to the lower classes. As a result, once attracted to political activism, rural, small-town, and urban lower-middle class youth flock to the ranks of the IJT in search of a place in national politics. The IJT’s social control on campuses is therefore reinforced by the organization’s promise of political enfranchisement to aspiring students.
A third of the current leaders of the Jama‘at began as members or affiliates of the IJT. The IJT recruits in the ranks of the Jama‘at have created a block of voters in the party who bring with them close organizational bonds and a camaraderie born of years of student activism, and whose worldview, shaped by education in modern subjects and keenly attuned to politics, is at odds with that of the generation of ulama and traditional Muslim literati they will succeed. By virtue of the sheer weight of their numbers, IJT recruits are significantly influencing the Jama‘at and are improving organizational continuity between the Jama‘at and the IJT.
In the final analysis, the IJT has been a successful organization and a valuable political tool for the Jama‘at, though its very success eventually checked its growth and led the organization down the path to violence. Throughout the 1970s, the IJT seriously impaired the operation of a far larger mass party, the People’s Party, a feat accomplished by a small core of dedicated activists. The lesson of this success was not lost on other small aspiring Pakistani parties, who also turned to student activism to gain political prominence. Nor did larger political organizations such as the People’s Party or the Muslim League, who had an interest in restricting entry into the political arena, remain oblivious to student politics as a weapon. They concluded that the menace of student activism could be confronted only by students. The Muslim Student Federation was revived by the Muslim League in 1985 with the specific aim of protecting that party’s government from the IJT. The resulting rivalries for the control of campuses, needless to add, has not benefited the educational system in Pakistan.
3. Jama‘at-i Islami Leaders with a Background in the IJT in 1989–90
Rank in the Jama‘at Level of Affiliation with IJT
Source: Office of the secretary-general of the Jama‘at-i Islami.
Qazi Husain Ahmad Amir Friend
Khurram Jah Murad Deputy amir Nazim-i a‘la
Khurshid Ahmad Deputy amir Nazim-i a‘la
Chaudhri Aslam Salimi Secretary-general Friend
Liaqat Baluch Deputy secretary-general Nazim-i a‘la
Hafiz Muhammad Idris Deputy secretary-general[a] Member/senior Member
Sayyid Munawwar Hasan Amir of Karachi[b] Nazim-i a‘la
‘Abdu’l-Muhsin Shahin Amir of Multan Member
Shabbir Ahmad Khan Amir of Peshawar Member
Rashid Turabi Amir of Azad Kashmir Member
Amiru’’l-‘Azim Director of information department Member
Maqsud Ahmad Secretary-general of Punjab Member
‘Abdu’l-Rahman Quraishi Director of international affairs Secretary-general of Sind
The proliferation of student organizations was also a function of the sacralizing of campus politics. The IJT’s success in the 1970s had pointed to the importance of Islamic loyalties among students. Few other viable “Islamic” student organizations existed then, and the IJT reigned supreme among religiously conscious Pakistani students. The IJT had successfully manipulated this state of affairs, translating disapproval of the People’s Party’s avowed socialism and Bhutto’s indiscreet breaches of Muslim moral sensibilities among the religiously conscious students into victories in campus elections. As a result the IJT was able to produce a single political platform and to win votes far exceeding its numbers—exactly what the Jama‘at had always aimed at and failed to do. Other Islamic parties, however, quickly became aware of the basis of the IJT’s success and, wishing to tap into the same vote bank, strengthened student organizations of their own. Many of these organizations were formed by those who broke away from the IJT. The founders of the Jami‘at-i Tulabah-i Ahl-i Hadith Pakistan (Ahl-i Hadith Student Organization of Pakistan) and the Anjuman-i Tulabah-i Islam (Society of Muslim Students), a student group affiliated with the Jami‘at-i Ulama-i Pakistan (Society of Pakistani Ulama), in 1987–1988, for example, had been members and leaders of the IJT. By 1981, Punjab had become infested with student organizations, most of them associated with right-of-center and religious parties. No longer restrained by their opposition to a common enemy—Bhutto, socialism, and the People’s Party, which the IJT had purged from the campuses between 1977 and 1981—the neophyte student organizations began to nibble at the IJT’s base of support, splintered the religious vote, and significantly reduced the IJT’s power base.
The IJT’s predicament was also precipitated by the authoritarian nature and Islamic image of the Zia regime. Urban students in Pakistan are more politically conscious than rural ones, who are primarily motivated by religious concerns.The People’s Party government in the 1970s, with its authoritarian style and secular posture, had provided the IJT with the means to coalesce the antiauthoritarian urban and the religiously conscious rural students into a single student protest movement. Zia, by appealing to the religious sensibilities of rural students and antagonizing the politically conscious urban students, divided the IJT’s constituency. As a result the IJT began to lose elections on one campus after another, and by 1984 it had become bogged down in a vicious battle with rival student organizations—religious, ethnic, and secular in orientation—to protect its turf. Most small-town campuses in Punjab were lost to the Anjuman. Competition with the Anjuman by 1989 escalated to pitched battles in Gujranwala which left at least one student dead. The Muslim Student Federation, meanwhile, managed to unseat the IJT in a number of Lahore campuses, again culminating in a cycle of assassinations. The violence brought the burgeoning anti–People’s Party alliance, Islami Jumhuri Ittihad (Islamic Democratic Alliance [IJI]), which included both the Jama‘at and the Muslim League, to the brink of collapse in 1989. The People’s Student Federation and the Pakhtun Student Federation in North-West Frontier Province, the People’s Student Federation in Islamabad, and the Baluch Student Federation in Baluchistan went into battle against the IJT. Finally, in rural Sind the People’s Student Federation and Sindhi nationalist student groups and in Karachi and Hyderabad the All-Pakistan Muhajir Student Organization (APMSO), a breakaway of the IJT floated by the Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz (Muhajir National Front), routed the IJT in student elections and restricted its maneuverability on campuses. The Muhajir organization was founded in 1986 by a group of Muhajir IJT members who objected to the Punjabi domination of the IJT. It has since controlled the politics of the urban centers of Sind and has emerged as a formidable force in Pakistani politics. The IJT’s confrontation with the APMSO in 1988 turned Karachi University into a war zone, forcing the military to occupy the university and to close it down. During 1990–1992, when the Jama‘at was a member of the ruling coalition, clashes between the IJT and the APMSO acted as a major source of tension within the IJI government. Fighting simultaneously against religious, ethnic, and secular student organizations has also created confusion in the ranks of the IJT with deleterious consequences.
Despite all these setbacks and after more than a decade of student battles (1980–1992), the IJT continues to remain the most prominent student force in Pakistan. Efforts such as Bazm-i Paygham have helped the IJT to overcome some of the ground lost in the universities, but more important, the IJT has remained the only student organization which exists in every province and on every university campus and therefore is the only student organization capable of acting on a national scale. As a sign of its continued vitality, the IJT has managed to retain control over the University of Punjab, the most important Pakistani university and the prize of student politics.
The greatest significance and long-run effect of the IJT, however, lies in its influence on Pakistani society. Year after year a multitude of students come into contact with the Jama‘at’s literature through the IJT; many even undergo various levels of indoctrination at a formative and impressionable juncture in their lives. Through the IJT, the Jama‘at leaves a permanent mark on the potential thinking and style of future Pakistani leaders, intellectuals, and bureaucrats. Regardless of where the alumni and sympathizers of the IJT go following their graduation, whether they stay close to the Jama‘at or veer off in other directions, they carry the mark of the Jama‘at—its reading of Islam and its social ethos—with them. They become the vehicles for a gradual and yet fundamental process of cultural engineering that is at the center of Mawdudi’s original program and that has far greater social and ultimately political ramifications than the immediate gains of the IJT.
References:
1. Sayyid Abu’l-A‘la Mawdudi, Tafhimat (Lahore, 1965), vol. 2, 286. At that time student activism was rampant in northern India, and critical to the success of the Pakistan movement; Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, Education in Pakistan: An Inquiry into Objectives and Achievements (Karachi, 1975), 263–65.
2. Interview with Zafaru’llah Khan in JVNAT, vol. 1, 11.
3. Ahmad Anas, “Jami‘at ka Ta’sisi Pasmanzar,” in TT, vol. 1, 113–14.
4. Interview with Khurram Jah Murad in JVNAT, vol. 1, 48.
5. Interviews with Khurshid Ahmad and Absar Ahmad in JVNAT, vol. 1, 144–45 and 153.
6. Interview with Khurshid Ahmad in JVNAT, vol. 1, 127–28.
7. Gilani, in fact, cites combating the left as a reason why the IJT was initially formed; see Sayyid Asad Gilani, Maududi: Thought and Movement (Lahore, 1984), 78.
8. Interview with Khurshid Ahmad.
9. Interview with Zafar Ishaq Ansari, an early leader of the IJT.
10. Interview with Israr Ahmad in JVNAT, vol. 1, 92–99.
11. See Mawdudi’s speeches of May 30, June 19, and October 30, 1955; cited in MMKT, vol. 3, 31–36, 51–54, and 108–17.
12. On November 9, 1969, for instance, Mawdudi told a gathering of IJT members that the important task before them was to rid Pakistani universities of the left; cited in SAAM, vol. 2, 348–49.
13. Salim Mansur Khalid, Al-Badr (Lahore, 1985); and K. M. Aminu’l-Haq, “Al-Badr Commander Bulta Hi,” in TT, vol. 2, 326–54.
14. Interview with Muti‘u’l-Rahman Nizami in JVNAT, vol. 2, 234–35.
15. The Annual Report of Islami Jami‘at-i Tulabah (Lahore, 1988), 4–10.
16. The extent of the IJT’s activities have led to charges, often credible, that IJT workers receive stipends from the Jama‘at, suggesting that furtive financial linkages do exist between the two organizations. One source cites that stipends of Rs. 150 to Rs. 1,000 per month are dispersed among IJT workers, depending on the level and function of the worker or member; Friday Times (September 14, 1989): 11.
17. ‘Abdu’l-Shakur, “Jahan-i Tazah ki Takbirin,” in TT, vol. 2, 71–72.
18. Javid Hashmi, “Ik Jur’at-i Rindanah,” in TT, vol. 2, 51–52.
19. Hafiz Khan, “Zawq-i ‘Amal,” in TT, vol. 2, 23.
20. U. S. Embassy, Islamabad, disp. #5303, 5/7/1979, DFTUSED, no. 45, 61.
21. Information was provided by offices of the Jama‘at-i Islami of Sind, Karachi.
22. Cited in Zahid Hussain, “The Campus Mafias,” Herald (October 1988),
23. On the attack on the offices of the Muslim newspaper in Islamabad, see U. S. Embassy, Islamabad, disp. #7850, 7/12/1979, DFTUSED, no. 46, 1–2.
24. Muhammad Afzal, Zia’s minister of education, negotiated with Khurshid Ahmad, Jama‘at’s overseer of the IJT, on the issue of student violence a number of times. The Jama‘at resisted taking serious measures, in part due to its fear of being unable to control the IJT. The regime then decided to ban all student union activities as a way of clamping down on the IJT; interview with Muhammad Afzal.
25. Interview with Mian Tufayl.
26. Friday Times (September 14, 1989): 11.
27. Hamqadam (July and August 1965).
28. Information provided by the Office of Secretary-General of the IJT.
29. Kiren Aziz Chaudhry and Peter McDonough, “State, Society, and Sin: The Political Beliefs of University Students in Pakistan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 32, 1 (October 1983): 28.
30. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1991), 3.
31. The Jama‘at-i Islami was officially divided into Indian and Pakistani organizations in February 1948. Of the organization’s 625 members at the time 385 ended up in Pakistan and 240 remained in India; see JIKUS, 52.
32. The Jama‘at-i Islami of Kashmir was formed in 1947 at the time of Partition. RJI, vol. 5, 61, which gives a list of Jama‘at members in 1947, cites no members in Kashmir. It has, however, been argued that a number of Kashmiris had visited Daru’l-Islam as early as 1937–1938. They set up the first Jama‘at cell in Jamun in 1944 and in Kashmir in 1946; see ‘Ashiq Kashmiri, Tarikhi Tahrik-i Islami, Jamun’u Kashmir (Lahore, 1989), 212–99. The party in that province, however, continued to grow independently of its sister organization centered in Delhi and is today a major actor in the separatist movement in that province. According to Jama‘at sources the Jama‘at-i Islami of Kashmir runs over 1,000 schools in the vale of Kashmir; interview with Khurshid Ahmad.
33. Mumtaz Ahmad, “The Politics of War: Islamic Fundamentalisms in Pakistan,” in James Piscatori, ed., Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago, 1991), 180.
34. As a result the Jama‘at has influenced the development of revivalism across the Muslim world. On the Jama‘at’s influence in the West, the Arab World, Afghanistan, Iran, and Malaysia, see Larry Poston, Islamic Da‘wah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (New York, 1992), 64–93; Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, 1985); John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York, 1992), 154–55; Abdelwahab El-Affendi, “The Long March from Lahore to Khartoum: Beyond the "Muslim Reformation,’ ” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin 17, 2 (1990): 138–39; Abdel Azim Ramadan, “Fundamentalist Influence in Egypt: The Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Takfir Groups,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance (Chicago, 1993), 156 and 161; Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (New York, 1990), 68–70 and 80; Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York, 1988); and Zainah Anwar, Islamic Fundamentalism in Malaysia (Kualalampur, 1989).
35. Mawdudi’s works were, for the main part, translated into Arabic by four of his followers: Mas‘ud ‘Alam Nadwi, Muhammad Kazim, ‘Asimu’l-Haddad, and Khalil Ahmadu’l-Hamidi. The four were all competent Arabists, of whom only Hamidi remains with the Jama‘at today, as the director of the Arabic Translation Bureau. For an outline of the bureau’s activities, see Khalil Ahmadu’l-Hamidi, “Jama‘at-i Islami ki Dasturi Jadd’u Jahd,” in CRTIN, 337–55.
36. Mawdudi’s works began to appear in Iran in the 1960s. They were translated into Persian from Arabic by Ayatollah Hadi Khusrawshahi and members of a translating team working with him. Articles on Mawdudi and excerpts from his works also appeared in various issues of Khusrawshahi’s journal Maktab-i Islam. Following the revolution of 1978–1979, a number of Mawdudi’s works were translated into Persian from Arabic by Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Khamana’i. Interestingly, the first Persian translation of a work of Mawdudi was done in Hyderabad, Deccan, by Mahmud Faruqi in 1946; RJI, vol. 4, 90. More recent translations of Mawdudi’s works into Persian have occurred in Pakistan by the Jama‘at, which target the Afghan community of Pakistan.
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ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has converted the letters of Justice (R) Wajihuddin Ahmed, Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Muhammad Hussain Mehnati against obscenity and vulgarity on the media into a petition and issued notices to chairmen PTA and Pemra and has fixed it for hearing on July 27, 2012. The petition is marked 104/2012 and the case will be heard in the open court on Friday. The SC order issued on Wednesday titled “Regarding control of obscene and other objectionable material carried in the media” reads: “Take notice that three separate letters were received from Justice (R) Wajihuddin Ahmad, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, ex-Ameer Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and Muhammad Hussain Mehnati, Ameer Jamat-e-Islami Karachi on the subject cited above and on placing all these letters before the honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan. His lordship was pleased to call reports from chairman PTA and Chairman Pemra. After perusal of the said reports, the honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan was pleased to pass the following order; ‘Treat this matter as petition under article 184(3). Put up in court. Notice to attorney general, chairman Pemra and to petitioners be issued for 27.07.2012.’ “Take further notice that the matter has been registered as the Constitutional petition No 104/2012 and is fixed for hearing on 27.07.2012 in Court House Islamabad.”The major issues regarding obscenity highlighted in the petition involve airing of illegal Indian channels through cable network, obscene and vulgar dramas on Pakistani channels, immoral advertisements on TV channels, illegal CD channels distributed by cable networks in connivance with Pemra, and in particular the entertainment segments in the news bulletins on Pakistani news channels.
