During the 1970s, the Islamist forces became the main
focus of opposition to the government, and the leftist, secular-
ist Prime Minister Zulfaqir Ali Bhutto (1971-77) tried to mol-
lify them by banning alcohol and gambling, but this was not
sufficient and in July 1977 the devout Muslim Muhammad
Zia al-Haqq led a successful coup, and established an ostensi-
bly more Islamic regime. He reinstated traditional Muslim
dress, and restored Islamic penal and commercial law. But
even President Zia kept Islam at bay in political and economic
matters, where his policy was avowedly secularist. Since his
death in a plane crash in 1988, Pakistani politics has been
dominated by ethnic tension, rivalries and corruption scandals
among members of the elite classes, and the Islamists have
been less influential. Islam remains important to Pakistan's
identity and is ubiquitous in public life, but it still does not af-
fect realpolitik. The compromise is reminiscent of the solu-
tions of the Abbasids and Mongols, which saw a similar
separation of powers. The state seems to have forced the Is-
lamic parties into line, but this state of affairs is far from
ideal. As in India, disproportionate sums are spent on nuclear
weapons, while at least a third of the population languishes in
hopeless poverty, a situation which is abhorrent to a truly
Muslim sensibility. Muslim activists who feel coerced by the
state look towards the fundamentalist government of the Tal-
iban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The fact that Muslims have not yet found an ideal polity
for the twentieth century does not mean that Islam is incom-
patible with modernity. The struggle to enshrine the Islamic
ideal in state structures and to find the right leader has pre-
occupied Muslims throughout their history. Because, like
any religious value, the notion of the true Islamic state is
transcendent, it can never be perfectly expressed in human
form and always eludes the grasp of frail and flawed human
beings. Religious life is difficult, and the secular rationalism
brent
(Brent)
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