Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

The Conflict Within
tion had emerged after an investigation showed that Dawood Badani,
a close relative of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousuf, was
the prime suspect in the Quetta attacks which had been carried out by
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the Sunni group closely linked to al-Qaeda
and to former Taliban rulers in Afghanistan. 4 Claiming responsibility,
the group said the attacks were a protest against the Musharraf government,
Iran and the United States. A videotape distributed by the
group showed that the two suicide bombers were madrasa students.
LeJ and other Sunni extremist groups had a history of sectarian violence
in Pakistan, but those tensions were inflamed by the US military
intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s support for it.
Sectarian conflict in Pakistan took an organized militant form in the
1980s. It had its roots in the so-called Islamization process initiated
by General Zia ul-Haq’s military regime. The government’s secular
disposition gave way to a professed determination to Islamize the
society. The Islamization of law, education and culture illustrated
the Sunni sectarian bias of the Pakistani state. General Zia’s Islamic
penal code was derived entirely from classical Sunni-Hanafi orthodox
sources. The official dissemination of a particular brand of Islamic
ideology not only militated against Pakistan’s sectarian diversity, but
also bred discrimination against non-Muslim minorities. The political
use of Islam by the state strengthened a clerical elite and created
sectarian groups that aggressively pushed their militant ideas. 5
The move towards the establishment of a Sunni-Hanafi state,
reflecting the beliefs of the dominant sect, created a sense of insecurity
among the Shia minority community. The dynamic of exclusion and
minoritization, which had existed since the creation of the country in
various forms, was sanctified by General Zia’s Islamization. 6 As a result,
the more orthodox and militant version of Sunni Islam had grown in
strength and public influence. The promotion of Deobandi orthodoxy
intensified the sectarian conflict. The spread of jihadist literature from
Afghan training camps to Pakistani madrasas in the 1980s fuelled
radicalism among the students. Islamization of education created
mass sectarian consciousness far beyond the confines of the madrasa,
which resulted in a dramatic shift towards extremist Sunni orthodoxy
and anti-Shia militancy. More extremist Sunni groups demanded a
constitutional amendment to declare Shias a non-Muslim minority and
excommunicate them from the realm of Islam.
The Shia community reacted strongly to the enforcement of the
Hanafi laws by the military regime. Until 1979, Pakistani Shias were
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