Politics of desecularization: law and the minority question in Pakistan, by Sadia Saeed, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 269 pp., £64.99 (hardback)

Abstract

<p>The Ahmadi religious sect in Pakistan are neither substantial in number nor particularly active in their politics beyond issues relevant to the workings of their own communities. And yet they have long featured prominently in discourses of national importance concerning the role and place of Islam in the state. Sadia Saeed aspires to explain this paradox in her book <i>Politics of Desecularization: Law and the Minority Question in Pakistan</i>. She argues that the contentious legal and political battles fought over the status, rights and place of the Ahmadiyya in the country have more to do with the political competition and tensions associated with the impetus to construct Pakistan as a homogenous nation-state than with settling matters of theological or religious significance. Saeed puts forward a compelling argument, demonstrating that the politicisation of the Ahmadis has colonial origins. The Ahmadi sect draws its name from its founder, Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908). The sect assumed its doctrinal shape in response to the challenges levelled at Muslims and Islam during a period of significant political upheaval, social competition between religious groups, and friction between local communities and the colonial government. Ahmad's reinterpretation of foundational tenets of the religion roused suspicion amongst the traditional Islamic establishment. His claim to prophethood set the movement outside the boundaries of theological toleration in Sunni Islam. The absolute finality of the prophethood of Muhammad is a cornerstone of mainstream Islam. Doctrinal tensions alone, however, fail to account for the scale and gravity of sectarian conflict in colonial India and post-independence Pakistan. Saeed maintains that specific historical contingencies facilitated the politicisation of these theological differences.</p>