MODERNIZATION AND ISLAM: THE EXPERIENCE AND LESSON OF PAKISTAN

It is the contention of this thesis that modernization and Islam in their essential worldviews are conflictual. It is proposed that an appreciation of this perspective will lead to a deeper understanding of the Islamic resurgence that began in the late 1970s. For Muslim society the historical phenomenon of modernization as change based on a scientific-rational and secular worldview has been especially problematic, given its view of history, society and politics based on the worldview derived from the Quran.;It is in this context that the experience of Pakistan is examined as a case study of the conflict between political modernization and Islam. Pakistan is taken as an illustration of the thesis, since it was expressly sought by Muslims of undivided India who argued that it would be possible to create a sociopolitical order that would be both Islamic and modern.;The experience of constitution-making during its first decade of independence is discussed in terms of institution-building. The politics of constitution-making brought forth into the open the conflicting visions of an Islamic social order and a modern democratic state. The legacy of the failure of constitution-making in Pakistan has been political decay, civil war, break-up of the country and consolidation of a praetorian instead of a democratic political order. The Islamic worldview is central to the history of Pakistan, and its political experience throws into sharp focus the thesis of this study.;In this study modernization is considered in its more narrow political sense as institution-building and political development. One of the consequences of the failure of political development is political "decay" and the emergence of a praetorian order. Muslim societies (such as Egypt, Iran and Pakistan) that have been "opened" to modernization without accompanying political development have suffered the effects of political decay and praetorianism. Islamic resurgence has been in part a response of traditional societies to modernization, and in part a reassertion of Islamic worldview in the post-colonial era to reconstitute Muslim society in accordance with the Islamic "vision" of social order.