The Sword Of Islam

By Tim McGirk/New Delhi

It's become a habit in Pakistan that whenever a ruler's popularity disintegrates, he or she begins waving the scimitar of Islam. Never mind that not once since Pakistan became a nation 51 years ago has this noisy brandishing of faith ever worked to bolster the leader's popularity. Now, with Pakistan ostracized after its nuclear tests and on the edge of economic collapse, Prime Minister Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif is reviving the old custom of trying to make the Islamic Republic of Pakistan even more Islamic than it already is.

Even in the best of times, the implementation of Shari'a, or Islamic law, led to quarreling among the country's 72 Muslim sects and subsects over the "pure" interpretation of the law. And this could be the worst of times for Pakistan to try to revive fundamentalist laws. Everything seems to be going wrong for Nawaz Sharif. His support of the Taliban militia in neighboring Afghanistan has drawn enmity from Iran and the Central Asian republics (see following story). India and Pakistan have intensified their cross-border artillery fire in disputed Kashmir. Nearly bankrupt, Pakistan may run out of foreign exchange by the end of the month, and the Karachi stock exchange imploded after the May 28 underground nuclear tests, wiping out half its share value.

If the nukes didn't scare off foreign investors, the mob outrage over the U.S. missile strike last month in nearby Afghanistan certainly did. Diplomats and executives from many Western companies fled Pakistan, fearing revenge attacks by supporters of Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden, the intended target of the American raid. In the port city of Karachi, ethnic gangs armed with grenades and machine guns prowl neighborhoods hunting for enemies. Sectarian rivalry among Muslims has become so fierce that some clergymen post bodyguards at their mosques to guard against bomb throwers speeding by on motorcycles. In Karachi, kidnappings of clergymen have become routine; their mosques are then seized by adversaries who try to convert the prayergoers to a harsher vision of Islam.

Will a stronger dose of religion cure Pakistan's ills? Many of Nawaz Sharif's countrymen think it could send Pakistan into terminal decline. According to the well-respected Karachi newspaper Dawn, people "just want a little improvement in their lives from the tyranny and callousness of Pakistani officialdom." Political opponents, including, of course, ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, say the new Islamic bill is likely to increase that tyranny. One interpretation holds that this amendment will anoint Nawaz Sharif as a religious dictator, a supreme arbiter of what is considered good and evil under Islam. Nawaz Sharif, though, contends that only a strict adherence to Shari'a--which relies on the Koran and on the Sunna, a record of the Prophet Muhammad's deeds and sayings--can save Pakistan from "corruption and maladministration."

At the moment though, Nawaz Sharif is hoping for a more earthly kind of intervention: he is in New York City this week at the United Nations, where he will appeal to Bill Clinton to lift economic sanctions--imposed after the nuclear tests--and push the International Monetary Fund into mounting a rescue. As part of the trade-off, Clinton wants him to sign the nuclear test-ban treaty. This may help him get the money he urgently needs, but would anger fundamentalists at home who would see this as capitulation and surrender.

If Nawaz Sharif succeeds in driving his Islamic bill through both the National Assembly and the Senate in the coming weeks, Pakistan, long a reliable U.S. ally in South Asia, will become one of the world's most severe Islamic states. Among Muslim nations, only Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan observe the undiluted Islamic law. This code of justice punishes a thief with amputation, an adulterer with a public flogging and a blasphemer with execution; a man can rid himself of a wife merely by saying "I divorce thee" three times. The more moderate Islamic states apply Shari'a to family and religion but not to legal and state matters. Take beards, for example: in Afghanistan, members of the ruling Taliban militia will grasp a passerby's facial hair in their fist. If the beard is shorter than the Taliban's fist, the offender is publicly whipped. But next door in Iran, Shi'ite Muslims believe that according to the Koran, a beard can be a stubbly 1 cm long. Nawaz Sharif, whose chin is cherub-smooth, was asked if he too would grow a beard. No, he replied, nor will women in Pakistan be forced to veil themselves or stay indoors. Some women are skeptical. "It's a terrible thing. We are already practicing Muslims," says Rashida Patel, president of the Pakistan Women Lawyers' Association in Karachi. "With this new law, do they want to enter houses to see if someone is offering prayers or not?"

Nawaz Sharif may hold moderate views, but human rights activists fear the imposition of Shari'a may unleash an army of zealots. Minorities are worried too. Nearly 15% of Pakistan's Muslims are Shi'ite, and in several cities their mosques and schools have been attacked by Sunni extremists. Last week, after the murder in Islamabad of a Sunni extremist leader and three companions, his followers retaliated by burning down a mosque and several homes belonging to Shi'ites.

In some cases, previous attempts to impose fundamentalist law have taken bizarre forms. When a mullah named Maulana Sufi Mohammed decided to enforce strict Shari'a law in his mountain valley near the Afghan border, he prohibited driving on the left side of the road because the left hand is deemed unclean. Numerous car crashes failed to deter him. Inspired by the Taliban's medieval puritanism, mullahs in northwest Pakistan are destroying TVs and setting up roadblocks to stop cars and rip out music cassettes.

It is imperative that Pakistan shed its tradition of corrupt government, but few are convinced that Nawaz Sharif is the man to do this. His family is one of the richest in Pakistan, yet its members fork out only a pittance in taxes. The armed forces, which have a habit of intervening in Pakistani politics, are displeased with the Prime Minister, and some analysts fear that Nawaz Sharif's actions may increase friction between the pro-Western secularists and religious extremists within the ranks. Warns Maleeha Lodi, a newspaper editor and former ambassador to Washington: "Nawaz Sharif is trying to wrap himself in Islam. Perhaps he doesn't know that this will drive deeper wedges into a society that's already badly fragmented."

Faced with protests from opposition parties, human rights advocates and Islamic scholars, Nawaz Sharif may back down. If he insists on unleashing religious fervor in Pakistan, he could end up one of its first victims, because not all Islamic radicals trust his credentials. Says Maulana Fazl ul Rehman, leader of the militant Jamiat-Ulema-Islami party: "Nawaz Sharif's government is part of the same corrupt system he hopes to overthrow. Only we are the true devotees who will enforce Islam."

--With reporting by Ghulam Hasnain/Karachi and Syed Talat Hussain/Islamaba

With reporting by Ghulam Hasnain/Karachi and Syed Talat Hussain/Islamaba