Slouching Toward Medina 257the people, were denounced as un-Islamic by extremist members of
Pakistan’s Muslim clergy, clearing the way for the military coup of
General Zia al-Haq. With the help of the religious authorities, Zia
enacted a forced Islamization process in which Islam became both
public morality and civil law. After Zia’s death in 1985, a new wave of
elections resulted in the reformist governments of Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif, both of whom expounded a more liberal ideal of Islam
in order to tap into Pakistan’s frustration with nearly a decade of bru-
tal fundamentalism. But in 1999, after accusing the elected govern-
ment of corruption, the head of Pakistan’s army, Pervez Musharraf,
imposed yet another military dictatorship on the country. All this in a
span of fifty years.
The experience of Pakistan serves as a reminder that the Islamic
state is by no means a monolithic concept. Indeed, there are many
countries in the modern world that could be termed Islamic states,
none of which have much in common with each other. Egypt is an
autocracy posing as a republic, with a president for life and an impo-
tent parliament. Syria is an Arab dictatorship whose ruler serves at the
pleasure of its all-powerful military. Jordan and Morocco are volatile
kingdoms whose young monarchs have made timid steps toward
democratization, though without forfeiting their absolute rule. Iran is
a fascist country run by a corrupt clerical oligarchy committed to
snuffing out any attempts at democratic reform. Saudi Arabia is a fun-
damentalist theocracy whose only constitution is the Quran and
whose only law is the Shariah. And yet not only do all of these coun-
tries view themselves as the realization of the Medinan ideal, they
view each other as contemptible desecrations of that ideal.
But if one were truly to rely on the Medinan ideal to define the
nature and function of the Islamic state, it would have to be character-
ized as nothing more than the nationalist manifestation of the
Ummah. At its most basic level, the Islamic state is a state run by Mus-
lims for Muslims, in which the determination of values, the norms of
behavior, and the formation of laws are influenced by Islamic moral-
ity. At the same time, minority faiths would be protected from harm
and allowed complete social and political participation in the commu-
nity, just as they were in Medina. In the same way that the Revelation
was dictated by the needs of the Ummah, so would all legal and moral