THEOCRATIC AUTOCRACY IN PAKISTAN BETWEEN 1977 TO 1988 FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GRAMSCI'S THEORY OF CULTURAL HEGEMONY

This paper employs the Gramsci's "Theory of Cultural Hegemony" to investigate the objectives, methodology, and outcomes of theocratic political approach opted by the autocratic regime in Pakistan between 1977 to 1988. Gramsci Cultural Hegemony theory provides parameters of analysis such as "traditional intellectuals," "manufactured consent," "civil society," "political society," "organic intellectuals," and "historic bloc," which serve as concrete foundations for data analysis through the qualitative research methodology. This paper is significant as it elucidates how "political society" (authoritarian regimes), rather than choosing coercion, exercise “soft tools” over "civil society" (religious intellectuals) to manufacture the consent of the masses. This paper is unique as it has attempted to apply the Gramsci's cultural hegemony theory in its true essence to bring to light the long-term repercussions of the hegemonic policies of Zia's rule and to answer the unanswered questions regarding the foreign and internal policy challenges in today's Pakistan.

Intellectual Transformations and Elusive Reconciliation

This chapter sketches the course and ambiguities of modern intellectual transformations related to issue of religion and secularism. It takes up perceptions of historical backwardness, and various apologetic strategies in which Muslim Reform attempted to navigate the relations between scripture, tradition and the cognitive and political realities and desiderata of the day, and the relation between Muslim jurisprudence and the requirements of positive law. It discusses the adoption and adaptation of positivism and Darwinism, and the conflicts between secular and religious intellectuals over issues at once cognitive and political. It offers an analysis about the relationship between various currents of thought, and the changing realities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The chapter analyses the impasses of apologetic modernism.

Jesus, He’s My Brother

This chapter analyses the theological tenets present in the historical black church tradition undergirding freedom movements. It discusses the role of the church, black religious intellectuals of the 1920s-1930s and certain theologies—the creative authority of God, the idolatry of segregation, the exodus, the person of Jesus, and redemptive love. The chapter reveals how these animated early civil rights actions and activities in Americus.

A Perverted Balance: Modern Salafism between Reform and Jihād*

This article argues that there are structural affinities and continuities between the late nineteenth-century modernist reformers and today’s quietist, political, and jihādī Salafī factions. Salafism refers to the basic theological-ideological formation that postulates a return to pristine Islam to overcome tradition and bring regeneration. The Salafī balance between authenticity and modernization promoted by enlightened religious intellectuals in the late Ottoman period was shattered by the events of World War I and its aftermath. This resulted in its bifurcation between conservatives, who adopted literalist and xenophobic Wahhābī positions, and modernists, primarily the Muslim Brothers, who employed innovative means in their religio-political struggle to re-Islamize society and oust colonialism. The Salafī balance was reconstructed after independence on new, unenlightened lines in the Saudi Islamic Awakening (al-Ṣaḥwa al-Islāmiyya), which combined the erstwhile rigorous Wahhābī teachings with radicalized Islamism. Global jihādī-Salafism completed the perversion of the modernist Salafī balance by reducing the authentic way of the salaf to excommunication and violence and by using the most modern means in its war against both Westerners and indigenous Muslim governments.