Paradoxically, the creation of Pakistan, in 1947, diminished the clerics’ importance. Although the new nation was a homeland for Muslims, religious leaders rejected the notion that the nation-state, then a new-fangled concept, could contain the grandeur of the Muslim ummah, or community of believers. They sought a caliphate. Their rejectionism was a grave strategic mistake. In the early decades of Pakistan’s existence, army generals and powerful bureaucrats ruled the roost, leaving the clerics in the cold. The power of mullahs slipped. By the early 1970s, they had come to occupy a modest place
...more
