Courtesy Dawn.com: The Sunni Tehrik (ST), a Barelvi Islamist organisation, announced last Sunday that it was converting itself into a political party. To quite a few Pakistanis the ST comes across as being another sectarian outfit triggered by the controversial Islamisation process of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in the 1980s.
It is true that the ST was a consequence of the legacy of the sectarian mess Zia’s divisive policies had created, but it must be emphasised that during the dictator’s regime the Sunni sectarian outfits that emerged were almost all ideologically orientated towards either the Deobandi school of thought or the Salafi doctrine. The majority of Pakistani Muslims belong to the Barelvi school of thought – an 18th century emergence that fused elements of Sufism with rituals and beliefs of the faith being practised by Muslims of undivided India in the rural areas.
That’s why some scholars have also defined Barelvism as a kind of ‘folk Islam’, that may be riddled with some superstitions but is said to be far more moderate and pluralistic than the faith advocated and interpreted by its Deobandi or Salafi counterparts. According to sociologists like Abdul Qadeer and author Hassan Abbas, it is this perception that made Zia (and his intelligence agencies) concentrate on patronising political and militant outfits representing the more puritanical Sunni sects.
Categories: Asia, Human Rights, Pakistan