Islamization and Sectarian Violence in Pakistan

Abstract

Shiā‘ah-Sunnī violence has assumed alarming proportion in Pakistan during the recent years. While there is a long history of discord and occasional violence between the two groups, a number of factors have precipitated the violence, and kept it going on. The nature of the Islamization process during the Zia regime, with its emphasis on legalistic aspects of Islam (Shaīʿatization), rather than the broader objectives (maqāṣid) of Sharīʿah, was one of them. This created a feeling of being marginalized in the minorities. During this period the socioeconomic deprivation of a large section of the masses, suspension of political institutions, collapse of administrative machinery, and use of sectarian and ethnic discord for short-term political gains, created an atmosphere conducive to violence, including sectarian violence.