Two competing organizational trends at work within Pakistani Islamic movements are likely to shape the contours of post-2014 Pakistan, and by extension the security of the wider region. The first, as explored in depth by Stephen Tankel in this volume, is the trend toward atomization within the Pakistani militant milieu. While militant groups may uniformly celebrate the drawdown of Western forces in Afghanistan, the end of a significant foreign military footprint is bound to reveal differences rather than commonalities among these groups. Each will be forced to articulate afresh its core mission, its priorities for recruitment and operations, and its comparative advantages within the militant firmament. With a wealth of potential targets—in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and further afield—there is more than enough space for militant groups to develop new areas of expertise or, as in the case of Kashmir, return to old stomping grounds once the United States and coalition presence in Afghanistan no longer provides a compelling shared narrative for jihad.
At the same time, there is a trend toward collaboration among Islamic movements. This is already in evidence among militants, as seen by the growing cooperation between Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as Pakistani sectarian groups and the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan. This trend is equally striking among Islamic parties and other movements that operate in the formal political space and technically (though not always practically) eschew violence in their pursuit of an Islamic political vision. Perhaps the most striking recent example of this phenomenon has been the emergence of the pan-Sunni movement known as the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), which challenged the civilian government by agitating for Pakistani sovereignty, publicly condemning cooperation with the United States, and calling for the Islamization of the state.
Although the DPC was structured as an umbrella of dozens of distinct groups, its main constituent organizations were Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the reincarnation of the banned terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, representing the Ahl-e-Hadith tradition (see Tankel 2010; Fair 2011); Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Pakistan’s largest and best-organized Islamic political party, of the modernist tradition; and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam [Sami ul-Haq faction] (JUI-S), a small clerical party with long-standing ties to the Afghan Taliban movement, of the Deobandi tradition.1 The public profile of the DPC has ebbed and flowed since its founding in late 2011, and few expect it to become a permanent and institutionalized feature of the Pakistani political scene. It is, however, precisely this ad hoc nature that makes it interesting, suggesting the possibility of new post-2014 political configurations that encompass traditional Islamic parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami and militant organizations such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
Clearly, the dual trends of atomization and collaboration among Islamic movements are not mutually exclusive. If anything, the likely rearticulation by these movements of their unique goals and advantages in the post-2014 era raises the specter of new pan-Islamic configurations of convenience. Regardless of whether these take the form of episodic collaborations between militant groups or arrangements like the DPC that bridge political parties and militant outfits, it is worth considering both their limits and potential to shape Pakistan’s security environment. For example, can we expect to see the solidification of long-term Sunni collaboration in Pakistan, particularly with respect to issues of jihad and the state? Will a diverse group of Sunni organizations such as the DPC ever prove coherent enough to contest elections, to turn against the Pakistani state, to target religious minorities, or to collectively mobilize its members for jihad outside of Pakistan? And more generally, which types of groups might we anticipate forming partnerships in an era in which the presence of Western forces in Afghanistan no longer drives the logic of cooperation?
There are many ways to answer these questions. One approach would be to undertake a rigorous examination of pan-Sunni collaborations and their histories and look for ways to extrapolate to the post-2014 environment. Another would be to look for structural conditions under which political incentives for the constituent organizations might align to allow for certain joint activities.
This chapter will take a different tack. Setting aside structural political incentives, I will examine instead the political theologies of several representative organizations that have already begun to collaborate—the key DPC constituent groups—and what they have communicated to the public and to their own members about jihad and the state. This approach rests on several assumptions. First, that while the articulation of religious ideology in the public square is often politically instrumental, it is not always merely a handmaiden to politics. Belief is often legitimately held and earnestly communicated to the community. Second, that by putting down markers on certain theological points in public documents, the leaders of these constituent organizations have consciously socialized certain religious and political norms, and that those norms have an organizational power all their own. (This is particularly true if, as in the case of Hafiz Saeed’s commentary analyzed below, they are used as instructional texts for structured cadre training programs.) While it is not impossible for a leader to walk back public statements, such discourse creates organizational expectations that can be difficult to overturn. The third and final assumption that under-girds this approach is that any analysis that relies solely on comparative theological reasoning cannot be comprehensive or conclusive, but at best suggestive of the normative and ideological constraints in which leaders and organizations operate and the likely bounds of interorganizational cooperation.
With these caveats in mind, we will take as our primary text a remarkable book written by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the current leader of its successor organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa, entitled Tafseer Surah at-Taubah. The book is a commentary on one particular chapter of the Quran, Surah at-Taubah. Originally compiled from Saeed’s lectures at the Lashkar-e-Taiba summer 2004 training session, the material was first published in Urdu in late 2006 while Saeed was in jail, and then translated into English by the organization’s in-house press Dar-ul-Andlus two or three years later. For purposes of comparison, I will examine Tafseer Surah at-Taubah alongside commentaries on the same surah by Maulana Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami; and by Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘, perhaps Pakistan’s most respected Deobandi scholar, and one who remains widely read by students in Sami ul-Haq’s faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e Islam. (I will also occasionally reference a more recent commentary by Shafi’s son, the renowned jurist Muhammad Taqi Usmani, which updates his father’s work.)
I will begin with a look at Surah at-Taubah itself, and its significance for Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Islamic organizations that privilege the mission of jihad.2 I will then compare the ways in which the Ahl-e-Hadith, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Deobandi scholars deal with three broad categories of issues that appear in Surah at-Taubah and have modern-day resonance—the Muslims’ proper posture toward non-Muslims; the legitimacy of the state; and the sacrifices that are to be made in the pursuit of jihad. I will conclude with a discussion of what these commentaries suggest about the prospect of collaboration among Sunni organizations in Pakistan in a post-2014 environment that is likely to be both newly atomized and newly collaborative.
Surah at-Taubah, “the Repentance,” contains three major discourses. The first, covering verses 1–37, recounts instructions for the faithful as to how they are to deal with the polytheists among them. This first discourse is often believed to have been revealed after the later discourses in the surah (Maududi 2011: 2:161). The second discourse, verses 38–72, narrates preparations for the Tabuk campaign, an expedition led by Muhammad in response to a reported advance of the Byzantines in northern Arabia, collaborating with Christian Arab tribes; the Byzantines, as it happened, failed to materialize and the campaign was reduced to a “moral victory” linked to the Muslims’ show of force (Maududi 2011: 2:168). The third and final discourse, covering verses 73–129, was ostensibly revealed after the return from Tabuk, and both warns hypocrites among the Muslim community and rebukes those who failed to join the jihad.
At-Taubah attracts considerable interest from those Muslims who champion armed jihad against nonbelievers. According to one recent quantitative study, it is the most frequently cited surah by Islamic extremists (Halverson, Furlow, and Corman 2012: 6–8) and contains one of the most famous exhortations to target nonbelievers, known as the “verse of the sword”:
Then when the sacred months have passed, then kill the mushrikun [polytheists] wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform as-Salat [prayers], and give Zakat [alms], then leave their way free. Verily, Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful. (Quran 9:5, quoted from Saeed n.d.: 61)
Since Surah at-Taubah is widely believed to be one of the last chapters of the Quran to be revealed, harsh exhortations such as this one are said to abrogate earlier Meccan surahs that encourage a more accommodating posture toward nonbelievers.
It should therefore come as no surprise that at-Taubah appears to hold an important place in the ideology of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Hafiz Saeed’s commentary on the surah was the very first work of long-form Quranic interpretation published as a book by the Lashkar-affiliated publishing house, and the first to be translated into English. The book’s preface praises at-Taubah as “the guiding light for Muslims of the modern world and an explicit admonition to the non-Muslims and polytheists of the world,” and laments that the surah was “ousted” from Pakistan’s academic curriculum after September 11, 2001 (Saeed n.d.: 24).3 Hafiz Saeed himself, in introducing the book, frames the importance of the surah and the questions it answers:
The subject-matter of Surah Taubah is “Qital-Fi-Sabeel-illah” [sic]—holy war in the way of Allah. What are the aims and objectives of the Islamic jihad? What qualities should go with the holy warriors of Islam? Who are to be fought against? This surah encompasses all these issues. This surah offers us the etiquette of jihad and enlivens before us the golden era of the dominance of Islam. . . . The lesson of the surah is that the Muslims are to dominate the world being the rightful representatives and vice-regents of Allah on earth and that the non-Muslims are to play the second fiddle. (Saeed n.d.: 31, 36)
Insofar as Lashkar-e-Taiba understands Surah at-Taubah as a textbook of jihadi practice, its commentary highlights three particular themes. The first is Muslims’ proper posture toward non-Muslims, a subject on which at-Taubah without question provides one of the most polemical Quranic texts. Even more than other interpreters, Hafiz Saeed seems intent on using at-Taubah to delimit clear rules about which groups of people do and do not qualify as legitimate targets of jihad. The second theme is the legitimacy of the state. Here Hafiz Saeed extrapolates significantly from the text in commenting on India, Pakistan, and the legitimacy of democratic governance. Third, the commentary dwells at great length on the sacrifices that are to be made in the pursuit of jihad. Hafiz Saeed uses the Tabuk story as both a metanarrative for modern-day jihad—for example, emphasizing how a show of force against an external enemy can bolster the religious community and weed out hypocrites—and a sourcebook for modern-day jihad, answering a host of quotidian concerns about the modalities of war.
Drawing on the first few verses of the surah, Hafiz Saeed delimits four categories of people. The first are the “infidels and polytheists.” Under the terms laid out in the surah, these nonbelievers living in Muslim lands were to have their peace treaties abrogated, but only after advance notice was given. Ultimately, they were to be given a choice to convert, flee, or be killed. Drawing a modern analogue, Saeed is quick to label Hindus as the modern-day infidels (“It goes without saying that Hindus are the worst polytheists of the world”) who have been abusing Muslims and deserve jihad (n.d.: 38).
Surprisingly, the second group of people, Jews and Christians, come in for even harsher criticism than the Hindus. The text explains “beyond any ambiguity” that the people of the scriptures had “mutilated the Shariah” and “devoured others’ wealth and property as a right,” and that these activities were continuing “even today” (Saeed n.d.: 37–38). At least in this particular commentary, the Jews and Christians are intimated to be the preeminent threat to the Muslim community. In his commentary on 9:29, Saeed easily pivots to the present tense: “Allah has ordered the believers to continue killing the people of the scripture, Ahl-e-Kitab. Such killing is not at all unreasonable and unlawful” (n.d.: 155).
The third group are the true believers, who predictably have been given “divine directions to wage jihad against the enemies of Allah” (Saeed n.d.: 38). The fourth and final group, in stark contrast, are the hypocrites (munāfiqīn), who pretend to be Muslims but succumb to greed or worldliness (Saeed 2006: 30ff). Surah at-Taubah speaks at great length about hypocrisy, and Hafiz Saeed draws from this one key judgment: that “it is jihad alone (out of all the practices of Islam) which demarcates true believers from hypocrites” (2006: 40). He later goes on to argue that jihad not only exposes, but also weakens, the hypocrites who are residing among the community of believers.
Thus far, this commentary may appear unremarkable. And indeed, it bears close resemblance to other Sunni commentaries on the same surah. Nonetheless some distinguishing features are worth noting. In the first place, it presents a relatively unqualified interpretation of the famous “verse of the sword.” Whereas the staid Deobandi commentary of Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘ gives only cursory treatment of the verse, and goes on to argue that the “driving objective [of jihad] should be compassion for the enemy” (Shafi‘ 2004: 4:321), Hafiz Saeed applies the requirements of jihad liberally to polytheists, Jews, and Christians. And whereas Shafi’s son, the contemporary Deobandi jurist Muhammad Taqi Usmani, notes carefully that the rules about expunging non-Muslims “are restricted only to the Arabian Peninsula” (Usmani 2010: 347), Saeed suggests no such geographic constraints.
If Saeed appears more zealous than the Deobandi establishment in his rationale for jihad against polytheists, Jews, and Christians, he is nonetheless more cautious than al-Qaeda’s ideologues in his vision of jihad against hypocrites. Simply put, he views jihad as a tool by which to winnow the true believers from the hypocrites—thus pressuring and marginalizing those who are wavering or worldly—but admonishes his readers to follow Muhammad’s example and “not wage any war or action against those Muslims who were otherwise quite weak in faith” and who were within the fold of Islam (Saeed n.d.: 56). “We must,” he cautions, “eschew mutual quarrels” (57). Hypocrites, in other words, are a category off-limits to the regular exercise of jihad.
Hafiz Saeed uses his commentary on Surah at-Taubah to address two political questions related to the Pakistani state: (1) is participation in Pakistan’s elected institutions legitimate? (2) are there conditions under which Muslims should target the Pakistani state for jihad? On both counts, Saeed is unambiguous. Commenting on verse 34, which lists the many faults of the Jews and Christians in listening to their rabbis and monks instead of to God, he laments that Muslims have followed their lead in adopting parliaments that “come into being through the unnatural process of votes and elections,” in which “the majority decides the laws of whatsoever nature.” This system of majority decision making is, he argues, “one of the evils of the modern times among Muslims” (Saeed n.d.: 162)
He is no more charitable to Muslims who choose to embrace Pakistan’s democratic institutions as the lesser of two evils. In a thinly veiled swipe at the Jamaat-e-Islami, he dismisses attempts by “some religious groups” to seek elected office:
Some people do believe that the Western democracy is quite un-Islamic but they also take an active part in politics . . . [saying that if] we are not there to combat the irreligious pack of rulers, these people would come up with anti-Islamic legislation. . . . The plea adopted by these brothers is not at all acceptable. (Saeed n.d.: 163)
Although the text of Surah at-Taubah says little about political leadership or representational politics, Hafiz Saeed chooses to take a passage on Jews and Christians and make a point about the illegitimate participation of Pakistan’s Islamic parties in the democratic system.
More striking even than this is Saeed’s firm rejection of taking up arms against the Pakistani state. Drawing on the four-category framework constructed from the early verses of the chapter, he considers Pakistan to be run by hypocrites, and thus disqualified as a target for legitimate jihad. Addressing this issue directly, he writes:
Some ignorant people venture to say today: “What need is there to wage jihad against Hindus in Kashmir? There is much room for jihad within Pakistan. There are many centers of polytheism in Pakistan. The very government of Pakistan is anti-Islamic. There is a wholesale waywardliness and secularism here. Why not wage jihad against these evils first. Let’s usurp the throne in Islamabad first. Then we would start jihad.”
These are all lousy and baseless excuses. . . . Not only with the clans of pagans and polytheists, the Holy Prophet did not wage any war or action against those Muslims who were otherwise quite weak in the faith. (Saeed n.d.: 55–58)
It follows for Saeed that the proper posture toward “tyrant rulers” who are Muslim is to speak truth regarding their misdeeds, press them to reform, and leave to Allah their punishment in the hereafter (Saeed n.d.: 328ff).
Saeed devotes a lengthy section of his commentary to answering those who take a harsher view of dealing with hypocrites. He quotes a hadith from Sahih Bukhari in which Muhammad refused to behead a hypocrite, lest he be accused of killing his own companions (Bukhari 4905, quoted in Saeed n.d.: 323). Later, he bemoans the fact that in challenging Muslim rulers, Islamic revolutionary movements have often brought upon themselves “unpleasant consequences,” and that, however hypocritical the state may be, it is counterproductive to invite its enmity (Saeed n.d.: 330).
The rules for dealing with individual hypocrites, who presumably pose a lesser risk to the Muslim community, are somewhat harsher. While arguing for leniency in principle, he nonetheless instructs his readers to follow a set of rules when interacting with these wayward believers. The faithful are not to pray for them, stand at their graves, visit their mosques, develop rapport or friendship with them, or allow them to participate in jihad (Saeed n.d.: 324–325). This set of restrictions apparently applies to followers of the Sunni Barelvi sect as well, whom he castigates for their belief that Muhammad is nūr (light) and somehow stands above mortals (158).
Hafiz Saeed’s treatment of the hypocrites in his commentary on at-Taubah reflects continuity with a long line of Sunni interpretation within Pakistani intellectual circles. Maulana Maududi, in his still-popular commentary on the Quran, read at-Taubah to signal “the change of policy toward the hypocrites. Up to this time [in the life of the Muslim community], leniency was being shown to them. . . . And now it had become possible to crush them” (Maududi 2011: 2:218). He quickly clarifies that the end of leniency toward such hypocrites should not involve an active jihad of the sword, but rather a rigorous social boycott and the exclusion of legal privileges (“their evidence in the courts of law should be regarded as untrustworthy”) (2:219).
Maududi’s interpretation of at-Taubah’s discussion of hypocrites, published in the late 1970s, was likely informed by the heated debates that he himself had been instigating in Pakistan for over twenty years regarding the treatment of the heterodox Ahmadi sect (see Maududi 2006, first published in 1953). His early works on the Ahmadis suggest that he categorized them as kufr (infidel) rather than mushrik (hypocrite), but his proposed treatment was similar—social exclusion, legal and political sanction, and repeated attempts to demonstrate their subservience to the Muslim majority.
The Deobandi commentaries by Shafi‘ and Usmani are conservatively drawn and, unlike that of Hafiz Saeed, do not explicitly equate the hypocrites with any political body, much less the state itself. Shafi‘ counsels his readers to pursue a “vocal” (that is, verbal) jihad against the hypocrites in order to press them to sincerity (Shafi‘ 2004: 4:427). Usmani echoes his father in claiming that, according to at-Taubah, jihad cannot take the form of armed struggle with hypocrites, only “an oration or debate to convince them to the truth” (Usmani 2010: 366). Although Shafi‘ and Usmani do not here address the question of challenging the state, the Deobandi ulema throughout the subcontinent have—with rare exception—traditionally been reticent to endorse challenges to the state-as-kufr, calling at most for reform of state institutions, much as Hafiz Saeed did in his commentary.
Much of Surah at-Taubah is devoted to discussion of preparations for the Tabuk campaign or denunciations of those hypocrites who refused to participate. As such, the surah provides ample grist to Hafiz Saeed for commentary on the modalities of jihad. The first important lesson that Saeed draws from the Tabuk narrative is that jihad cannot be justified simply on the basis of its outcomes, or even its ultimate political objective. Rather, its value also lies in how it shapes the religious community, winnowing true believers from the hypocrites among them. The Tabuk campaign was, politically speaking, a nonevent; Muhammad and his forces never confronted the Byzantines, and, at best, the entire exercise could be rationalized as a modest show of force.
For Saeed, this makes the story all the more compelling as an archetype for modern-day struggle. Just as the Tabuk campaign—with all its hardships, sacrifices, and disappointments—separated the true followers from the morally weak, so jihad in the modern context has value as a continuous process of purification. “Of course,” Saeed writes, one goal of jihad is “the establishment of an Islamic state.” But jihad also is Allah’s way for revealing who is “patient, resolute, and steadfast” (Saeed n.d.: 213–214). At times, he suggests, Allah even sends his servants on missions that appear fruitless, so as to test and prepare them to fight against “Christians, Jews, Hindus and all other [tyrants] and aggressive disbelievers” (197).
The vision of jihad as a social and religious process has, for somewhat different reasons, generally been shared by the Deobandi clerics, who are cautious of condoning armed struggle, but see the Tabuk narrative as one that endorses in general terms the religiously purifying power of struggle for Allah’s cause. Maulana Maududi too acknowledged the value of jihad as a process, but—even in quoting at-Taubah in his famous work Jihad in Islam, puts considerably more sustained emphasis on the political outcomes associated with that struggle than social or religious ones (Maududi n.d.: 17–19). For Maududi, jihad was explicitly linked to the pursuit of power, in service of a particular political vision. Hafiz Saeed’s logic of jihad, by contrast, seems from the at-Taubah commentary to be less conditional on movement toward a political project and more easily justified in general terms as a devotion that can be shared by the community in all times and all places.
The second lesson that Saeed takes from at-Taubah is that jihad is obligatory. This may seem to be an obvious interpretive point, but in fact the precise nature of the obligation to jihad has long been debated by scholars. Saeed wrestles in particular with one of the last verses of at-Taubah, which counsels that “it is not [proper] for the believers to go out to fight [jihad] all together,” and instead a subset should go forth and the rest should remain to study their faith (Quran 9:122, quoted in Saeed n.d.: 473). Coming at the end of a long chapter that has repeatedly called the faithful to participate in jihad, this verse is puzzling. One classic interpretation, shared by many Deobandi scholars, is that jihad only qualifies as an individual obligation (farḍ al-‘ain) when there is “a general call for jihad from the ruler of an Islamic state” (Usmani 2010: 378). When that condition does not obtain, jihad is considered a collective obligation (farḍ al-kiyāyah). This means that, so long as the number of Muslims engaging in jihad are sufficient for the maintenance of the struggle, the “rest of the Muslims stand absolved of the obligation” (Shafi‘ 2004: 4:493).
Hafiz Saeed does not directly dispute this interpretation, but nor does he entirely embrace it. Whereas Taqi Usmani seems to envision a more or less stable “division of work” between those who were on jihad and the rest of society, Saeed suggests what might be called a “rotational jihad,” in which all Muslims are encouraged to take a turn at armed struggle (Usmani 2010: 379; Saeed n.d.: 477). This is consistent with his view that jihad is a perpetual condition, and one that benefits the Muslim community at large. In his commentary on this particular verse, he goes into great detail about what seems to be an obscure issue of jihadi human resource management: how to deal with those returning from the fight? His solution is consistent with the vision for a rotational jihad; he proposes to make them recruiters, pursuing the next group of faithful recruits.
Saeed also elides the implicit question addressed by many other scholars commenting on this passage: who decides when there is an individual obligation for jihad? The traditional Deobandi view is that such a determination requires the intervention of a legitimate political authority. Maulana Maududi also held this view, going so far as to argue that even when there was a public proclamation by a leader, only a subset of Muslims need engage in jihad. Saeed makes no such claim, and in fact does not explain the conditions under which jihad is incumbent on all believers.
The third and final lesson that Saeed draws from at-Taubah is that jihad should be maximally facilitated by a Muslim society. Not surprisingly, his interpretation of the permissible use of funds in support of jihad is expansive. Drawing on the text of the surah itself and the hadith literature, he concludes that funds given for zakat can properly be directed to buy ammunition and weapons, outfit the needs of the mujahideen (even those who are wealthy), pay off infidels “at a modest rate” to conduct espionage, provide for ransoms, and engage in public relations activities (Saeed n.d.: 262–268).
In urging the direction of zakat funds to directly support armed jihad, Saeed is not straying far from traditional interpretations. Shafi‘ in his commentary endorses the use of funds for such purposes—surprisingly, Saeed even quotes him approvingly—so long as they are not used to pay for the regular provision of public welfare or ordinary religious education (Shafi‘ 2004: 4:413). Maududi too saw in this text few if any encumbrances in directing charitable funds toward armed jihad. On the contrary, he went even further than Shafi‘ in arguing that Muslims could freely use their zakat funds to “win over to Islam those who might be engaged in anti-Islamic activities”—even if that had the effect at times of channeling money to infidels.
What might these commentaries of Surah at-Taubah suggest about the prospects for pan-Sunni collaboration in Pakistan? More specifically, what might religiously heterogeneous Sunni movements such as the Difa-e-Pakistan Council choose to do jointly that they cannot do separately? Again, we must lead with the caveat that public theology is at best only suggestive of a group’s behavior and agenda. That said, we can draw several preliminary conclusions from these texts.
First, it is evident that these three Sunni traditions share strikingly similar views on a number of core objectives. They all seek an Islamic state; they all believe that jihad is an essential vehicle for realizing that state; and they all see value in mobilizing the public to engage in that struggle. These commonalities alone suggest wide scope for cooperation. Comparing their respective commentaries, however, also hints at possible tensions. The Jamaat-e-Islami is considerably more focused on the political outcomes of jihad than on its utility as a tool for refining the Muslim community.4 For his part, Hafiz Saeed appears entirely comfortable with a perpetual jihad that, like the Tabuk expedition, is rendered valuable by its demonstration effect to enemies and its transformative ability to winnow the truly faithful from the hypocrites. This subtle teleological divergence could easily manifest as disagreement in the day-to-day operations of a pan-Sunni collaboration like the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, with Lashkar-e-Taiba pushing for the DPC to act as a permanent public campaign for jihad, and the Jamaat-e-Islami hoping to leverage it for near-term political objectives.
Second, the three traditions generally embrace similar interpretations of the first discourse of at-Taubah that differentiates between polytheists, people of the book, the faithful, and hypocrites. All take a disparaging view toward polytheists (particularly Hindus), and emphasize that non-Muslims living in a Muslim state must pay a tax that accords with their status as subjects of Muslim rule. Hafiz Saeed goes somewhat further than many Deobandi or Jamaat-e-Islami commentaries by exhorting his readers to continue an active jihad against Jews and Christians. In retrospect, we might observe that Lashkar-e-Taiba’s 2008 attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai reflects in practice Hafiz Saeed’s normative reading of at-Taubah, which renders Jews and Christians high-priority targets for an armed jihad. Further, we might expect that any pan-Sunni organization in which Lashkar has a prominent role may well choose to prioritize jihad against Christians and Jews in the coming years.
Third, all three traditions hold the view that a state run by hypocrites is not a legitimate target for armed jihad, but should rather be subject to criticism and reform efforts. It is not unexpected that Lashkar-e-Taiba, which from its early days has had a symbiotic relationship with the Pakistani military, would hold this view. It is, however, somewhat surprising that Hafiz Saeed goes to such great lengths in his commentary on at-Taubah to make this point explicitly, repeatedly, and conclusively about the Pakistani state. Indeed, his argument against attacking Pakistan is one of the central themes of his commentary and sends a clear signal to his own organization and to the public that Pakistan must—for theological reasons—remain off-limits as a target of armed jihad. In this, Saeed’s views comport with those of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Deobandi political parties, but directly challenge the takfiri ideologies of al-Qaeda (AQ) and the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP).
Fourth, while each tradition rejects the targeting of a hypocrite state, the commentaries reveal a fundamental difference regarding the legitimacy of democratic institutions. The Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, by virtue of their status as political parties, have long embraced Pakistan’s electoral process (though they are frequently critical of Pakistan’s political leaders). Hafiz Saeed in his commentary does not mince words about Pakistani democracy. Dilating on a passage from at-Taubah that has little to do with political leadership, he rebukes those Muslims who take part in elections and reserves special criticism for religious parties such as JI and JUI. In doing so, he situates Lashkar-e-Taiba in an uncomfortable middle ground between the religious parties who accept the legitimacy of the state and its electoral processes, and groups such as AQ and TTP who accept neither. His argument, moreover, is not that the current leadership in Pakistan is too corrupt to collaborate with, but that the very institutions of electoral politics that Pakistan has adopted are borrowed from Jews and Christians, and are thus illegitimate. Absent a wholesale and public revision of this position, it is difficult to imagine Lashkar-e-Taiba or its affiliates joining with religious parties such as the JI or JUI to stand for elections in Pakistan.
Fifth, the commentaries point to significant commonalities regarding the means by which jihad can and should be promoted. All of the writers agree that zakat funds can legitimately be used in almost any manner in support of armed jihad. The differences emerge more in theory than in practice, with Hafiz Saeed expressing enthusiasm for rotational recruitment of volunteers, and less concern for the role of the state in declaring the parameters for a general jihad that prompts an individual Muslim’s obligation to serve.
Taken together, these observations suggest that pan-Sunni groupings such as the DPC may have limited potential beyond their current use as platforms for intermittent and ad hoc public rallies. Any collective movement to use the group to mobilize for electoral political purposes would likely meet with resistance by Lashkar-e-Taiba or its affiliates. Moreover, any movement to challenge Pakistani state institutions by force or embrace those who do so would be highly suspect—at least on ideological grounds—to Lashkar and the religious parties alike. Given the explicit body of teaching in each of these traditions regarding politics and the state, shifts in either direction would require at least one organization to walk back a very public aspect of its ideological platform.
Those limitations notwithstanding, it is possible to imagine the DPC or another pan-Sunni group like it evolving beyond a loose knit confederation into something that involves more substantive collaboration but remains within the boundaries articulated by its leading ideologues. One model, taking into account the groups’ congruent views of fund-raising, could be joint mobilization for a jihad outside of Pakistan proper—for example, in Afghanistan, Kashmir, or farther afield. Although organizational politics might interfere, there is nothing ideological that would preclude these groups working closely to jointly fund-raise, recruit, publicly advocate, and provide political protection for an armed jihad taking place outside of Pakistan.
An alternate but related model could be joint activity targeting Hindus, Jews, or Christians—either within Pakistan or more likely elsewhere in the region. While all three traditions sanction armed jihad against these nonbelievers in certain circumstances, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s ideology is the most permissive in its emphasis on continuing an active jihad against them and in dismissing the need for legitimate state authority to weigh in on the targets of such a jihad. If Lashkar continues to take the lead in groups such as the DPC, it may be able to convince the other participant organizations to adopt this more focused mandate. (In view of the rising tide of sectarianism in Pakistan, joint activity by these Sunni organizations against Shia is not outside the realm of possibility; the Jamaat-e-Islami, however, has historically been wary of anti-Shia agitation, and Hafiz Saeed in his commentary on at-Taubah passed up numerous opportunities to label the Shia as infidels—or even hypocrites.)
It would be hopelessly naive to consider these commentaries authoritative in their ability to predict the bounds of future behavior by Islamic organizations in Pakistan. The last thirty years have amply demonstrated that such organizations frequently adapt their tactics and even their objectives. They splinter in disputes over both leadership and ideology. And they operate in a dynamic political environment in which survival is often dependent upon staking out a niche in the political and religious marketplace. These “market pressures” are only likely to intensify after 2014.
These commentaries can, nonetheless, point to the real challenges that a diverse body of Sunni organizations might reasonably face in trying to collaborate more substantively in Pakistan. By choosing to expound publicly and at length on its ideology of jihad and the state, Lashkar-e-Taiba in particular has perhaps precluded opportunities to collaborate both with religious parties and with more radical organizations that challenge the Pakistani state by force. Lashkar too may well adapt, choosing to leave behind the religious logic of the at-Taubah commentary or wait until a new generation of leadership has the opportunity to quietly reinterpret it. Until then, the organization may find itself in the uncomfortable position of leading an awkward coalition that has a great deal to say, but can find very little agreement about what it might actually do.
This analysis suggests that Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the region’s most technically proficient militant organizations, is likely to remain favorably disposed toward the Pakistani state post-2014 and that attempts to fashion a big-tent, pan-Sunni anti-Pakistan coalition with membership wider than the existing Deobandi-oriented Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan would face serious organizational challenges. That is perhaps good news for those concerned about Pakistan’s internal stability. But while pan-Sunni cooperation may indeed be restrained in the coming years by groups’ particular ideological and theological commitments, this analysis also points to the relative ease by which broad-based Sunni coalitions may forge substantive cooperation targeting already-vulnerable minority groups inside Pakistan or working together on a case-by-case basis to support jihadi projects outside of Pakistan’s borders. Those targets sadly remain easy ground for pan-Sunni collaboration after 2014 and are ones against which the Pakistani state is likely to remain supportive, or at best indifferent, as it seeks to displace Islamic militant challenges to its own legitimacy.
1. Most of the organizational energy and funding behind the DPC comes from Lashkar-e-Taiba and not the Jamaat-e-Islami. Author interview with a senior Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Lahore, August 2012.
2. This chapter will regularly refer to Lashkar-e-Taiba instead of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, as the latter is widely recognized to be merely a front organization for the former.
3. This trope regarding at-Taubah’s removal from the curriculum is a frequent topic for sermons by Lashkar ideologues (e.g., Abdus Salam bin Muhammad, a.k.a. Bhutwi Sahab), as found on extremist websites.
4. Although Maududi’s commentary on at-Taubah dates to the 1970s, research by the author into the party’s more recent writings suggests that this observation continues to hold.
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