Islam in Pakistan

Reviewing a persuasive work by a former student is never an easy proposition. On the one hand, a teacher cannot camouflage his/her pleasure and pride, but concurrently, the latter has to maintain a semblance of objectivity and even detachment. Zaman, a former graduate of Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam University with his doctoral degree from McGill, is certainly an acknowledged specialist on the study of Islam in South Asia, with reference to denominational seminaries and the labyrinthine relationship between the [ulama’ and politics or even their own mutual interface. His Ulema in Politics challenged some of the prevailing myths about the [ulama’ having been lost in the blind alleys of obscurantism and allegedly being unaware of, as well as indifferent to, the challenges posited by modernity and the plethora of scholarly debates and inquiries. Of course, the [ulama’, since the early era, have never been consensual though their objectives might have been mutually akin. Their resources and opportunism to immerse themselves in challenging academic discourses, much beyond an imposed self-sufficiency or enduring inadequacies, still did not let many of them lag behind in ensuring their own relevance for communitarian purposes. Their fracas with the secularist, liberal, critical and modernist counterparts are as much ongoing as is dissension among themselves. Selectively adopting modernist wherewithal while maintaining their own reservations, they are both the custodians of change as well as the main hurdle to a total statist and societal overhaul.