The role of the once-important religious parties in Pakistani politics has undergone a transition. Until the early 1990s, all of these parties had some sort of electoral strength which in pockets could prove decisive with some significance at the national political scene too.
The steady erosion in their vote bank has pushed these parties to the margins of the political landscape of the country. For example, the Jamaat-i-Islami is merely a shadow of its former self and the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam has suffered a similar fate. The rest of the religio-political parties also have lost the relevance they once had in the 1970s and ’80s.
The last ditch effort by Qazi Hussain Ahmed to restore Jamaat-i-Islami as the third option vis a vis the People’s Party and the Muslim League-N in the 1997 elections failed miserably. Similarly, the JUI under Fazl-ur-Rehman is only surviving because of its electoral influence in areas like Kohat and Dera Ismael Khan or a couple of seats that it occasionally manages to secure in Balochistan.
Sami ul Haq (JUI-S) or Tahir ul Qadri (founder of Pakistan Awami Tehreek) are only able to play second fiddle to any major party of their choice. However, on their own they could only be a nuisance for the sitting government. Both Haq and Qadri have demonstrated their respective skills quite adroitly in the past. But the method and style of both to fluster the people at the helm are markedly different.
One must not lose sight of the fact that religious-political parties had never been successful in electoral politics. The main reason for them being unsuccessful was the sectarian plurality of Pakistani society. The predicament of the religious parties has been the nature of religious discourse and practice which is steeped in sectarian fissures. Thus religious-political parties had been divested of a cross-sectarian support base which is imperative for electoral success. These parties, resultantly, have mostly relied on an agitational/exclusionary style of politics. That style has accorded these parties lethality, particularly when they have managed to forge alliances, as with the 1953 Anti-Ahmadi movement or in 1974 when they exerted pressure on the Bhutto government to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims.
Another instance was the PNA (Pakistan National Alliance) movement to depose Z.A. Bhutto from power in 1976-77. That electoral alliance included numerous secular parties but its political overtone was religious without any doubt.
All said and done, these parties had little political worth if they ever thought of operating individually. In agitational politics, another aspect worth considering is its momentary nature, triggered only through sentiments and not being able to create a longer lasting or sustained politics. Another important factor, forestalling religious parties from attracting voters is their emphasis on transnational issues instead of national problems like poverty, unemployment and loadshedding etc. Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan or American imperialism figures more prominent on their political agenda than the problems of immediate nature.
One can safely argue that religious extremism, sectarian killings and militancy have a lot to do with the transnational links that Pakistani religious-political parties have forged since the commencement of Afghan jihad in December 1979.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the ideological Other to these parties was Communism; that continuously made them paranoid but it also kept them alive and provided them with the cause to thrive. Western capitalist interest groups also lent unflinching support to the religious parties throughout this period. In the early 1990s, the Communist threat dissipated and the support from the West also ceased.
Now they are in quest of some ideological opponent which may replace Communism. Ironically, they have found that opponent in America or the West as a whole, but the material support for this position is hard to come by. Thus they are squeezed in a tight spot. Ironically again, these parties have come to employ the same idioms and categories which were once used by the leftists, like US imperialism, inequitable society in the capitalist societies and exploitation of the poor etc.
Besides, during the Zia regime, the state appropriated the religious narrative and the appeal of the religious parties to Islamise Pakistan was substantially corroded. Zia himself aspired to perpetuating his rule by assuming the title of Amir ul Momineen. His policy of Islamisation, despite all the disasters that it wreaked on the Pakistani populace, rendered the Islamic parties ineffective. In that scenario, these parties were left with hardly anything to sell to their political constituency as their aim.
But the worst was yet to come when an alliance Islami Jamhoori Ittihad (IJT) was conjured up prior to 1988 elections. In order to prevent Benazir Bhutto from coming into power, rightwing political groups and factions were brought together with religious parties like Jamaat-i-Islami, which was an extremely important component of the electoral alliance. Thus IJT came into existence.
Who was instrumental in forming the alliance and what tactics were employed to attract various electable candidates in its fold falls out of the scope of this article. What is significant to understand is that the Jamaat voters felt expedient to vote for rightwing mainstream party (which later on became PML-N) instead of voting for the Jamaat.
More recently, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has emerged as another beneficiary since ardent members of religious right have joined it en masse.
To conclude, the electoral base of these parties has considerably shrunk and the tendency in them to resort to violence has markedly increased. In this scenario, whether the religious parties would re-invent themselves without resorting to violence and make themselves counted in the political system is the million dollar question.