Making Sense of Pakistan

Making Sense of Pakistan
Author: Farzana Shaikh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190929111

Pakistan's transformation from supposed model of Muslim enlightenment to a state now threatened by an Islamist takeover has been remarkable. Many account for the change by pointing to Pakistan's controversial partnership with the United States since 9/11; others see it as a consequence of Pakistan's long history of authoritarian rule, which has marginalized liberal opinion and allowed the rise of a religious right. Farzana Shaikh argues the country's decline is rooted primarily in uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of 'being Pakistani'. This has pre-empted a consensus on the role of Islam in the public sphere and encouraged the spread of political Islam. It has also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, corrupting the country's economic foundations and tearing apart its social fabric. More ominously still, it has given rise to a new and dangerous symbiosis between the country's powerful armed forces and Muslim extremists. Shaikh demonstrates how the ideology that constrained Indo-Muslim politics in the years leading to Partition in 1947 has left its mark, skillfully deploying insights from history to better understand Pakistan's troubled present.

Making Sense of Pakistan

Making Sense of Pakistan
Author: Farzana Shaikh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190062053

Pakistan's transformation from supposed model of Muslim enlightenment to a state now threatened by an Islamist takeover has been remarkable. Many account for the change by pointing to Pakistan's controversial partnership with the United States since 9/11; others see it as a consequence of Pakistan's long history of authoritarian rule, which has marginalized liberal opinion and allowed the rise of a religious right. Farzana Shaikh argues the country's decline is rooted primarily in uncertainty about the meaning of Pakistan and the significance of 'being Pakistani'. This has pre-empted a consensus on the role of Islam in the public sphere and encouraged the spread of political Islam. It has also widened the gap between personal piety and public morality, corrupting the country's economic foundations and tearing apart its social fabric. More ominously still, it has given rise to a new and dangerous symbiosis between the country's powerful armed forces and Muslim extremists. Shaikh demonstrates how the ideology that constrained Indo-Muslim politics in the years leading to Partition in 1947 has left its mark, skillfully deploying insights from history to better understand Pakistan's troubled present.

Muslim Zion

Muslim Zion
Author: Faisal Devji
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 1849042764

Originally published: London: C.Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2013.

The Struggle for Pakistan

The Struggle for Pakistan
Author: Ayesha Jalal
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674744993

Established as a homeland for India’s Muslims in 1947, Pakistan has had a tumultuous history. Beset by assassinations, coups, ethnic strife, and the breakaway of Bangladesh in 1971, the country has found itself too often contending with religious extremism and military authoritarianism. Now, in a probing biography of her native land amid the throes of global change, Ayesha Jalal provides an insider’s assessment of how this nuclear-armed Muslim nation evolved as it did and explains why its dilemmas weigh so heavily on prospects for peace in the region. “[An] important book...Ayesha Jalal has been one of the first and most reliable [Pakistani] political historians [on Pakistan]...The Struggle for Pakistan [is] her most accessible work to date...She is especially telling when she points to the lack of serious academic or political debate in Pakistan about the role of the military.” —Ahmed Rashid, New York Review of Books “[Jalal] shows that Pakistan never went off the rails; it was, moreover, never a democracy in any meaningful sense. For its entire history, a military caste and its supporters in the ruling class have formed an ‘establishment’ that defined their narrow interests as the nation’s.” —Isaac Chotiner, Wall Street Journal

Pakistan

Pakistan
Author: Husain Haqqani
Publisher: Carnegie Endowment
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2010-03-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0870032852

Among U.S. allies in the war against terrorism, Pakistan cannot be easily characterized as either friend or foe. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is an important center of radical Islamic ideas and groups. Since 9/11, the selective cooperation of president General Pervez Musharraf in sharing intelligence with the United States and apprehending al Qaeda members has led to the assumption that Pakistan might be ready to give up its longstanding ties with radical Islam. But Pakistan's status as an Islamic ideological state is closely linked with the Pakistani elite's worldview and the praetorian ambitions of its military. This book analyzes the origins of the relationships between Islamist groups and Pakistan's military, and explores the nation's quest for identity and security. Tracing how the military has sought U.S. support by making itself useful for concerns of the moment—while continuing to strengthen the mosque-military alliance within Pakistan—Haqqani offers an alternative view of political developments since the country's independence in 1947.

Fatal Faultlines

Fatal Faultlines
Author: Irfan Husain
Publisher: ARC Manor
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2012
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781604504781

Do Muslims around the world hate us in the US? *** Aren't we the good guys? Don't we come to the aid of the poor and dislocated whenever there is a disaster in any part of the world? *** Attitudes of people in Muslim countries toward the US continue to confound American policymakers and the American public. Billions of dollars in aid has gone to Muslim countries, yet Muslims worldwide have an extremely unfavorable image of America and the West. *** Fatal Faultlines is a comprehen sive look at attitudes in Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world toward the US and the West, presenting a clear narrative of vastly conflicting interests and perceptions. *** It is an indispensable guide to understanding how rational people on each side of the divide can have such a different perspective on what is going on in the world.

The People Next Door

The People Next Door
Author: T. C. A. Raghavan
Publisher: Hurst & Company
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 178738019X

Published in 2017 by HarperCollins Publishers India.

Eating Grass

Eating Grass
Author: Feroz Khan
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2012-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804784809

The history of Pakistan's nuclear program is the history of Pakistan. Fascinated with the new nuclear science, the young nation's leaders launched a nuclear energy program in 1956 and consciously interwove nuclear developments into the broader narrative of Pakistani nationalism. Then, impelled first by the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan Wars, and more urgently by India's first nuclear weapon test in 1974, Pakistani senior officials tapped into the country's pool of young nuclear scientists and engineers and molded them into a motivated cadre committed to building the 'ultimate weapon.' The tenacity of this group and the central place of its mission in Pakistan's national identity allowed the program to outlast the perennial political crises of the next 20 years, culminating in the test of a nuclear device in 1998. Written by a 30-year professional in the Pakistani Army who played a senior role formulating and advocating Pakistan's security policy on nuclear and conventional arms control, this book tells the compelling story of how and why Pakistan's government, scientists, and military, persevered in the face of a wide array of obstacles to acquire nuclear weapons. It lays out the conditions that sparked the shift from a peaceful quest to acquire nuclear energy into a full-fledged weapons program, details how the nuclear program was organized, reveals the role played by outside powers in nuclear decisions, and explains how Pakistani scientists overcome the many technical hurdles they encountered. Thanks to General Khan's unique insider perspective, it unveils and unravels the fascinating and turbulent interplay of personalities and organizations that took place and reveals how international opposition to the program only made it an even more significant issue of national resolve. Listen to a podcast of a related presentation by Feroz Khan at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation at cisac.stanford.edu/events/recording/7458/2/765.

Discovering Islam

Discovering Islam
Author: Akbar S. Ahmed
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2002-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1134495439

This accessible work balances the image of Islam as aggressive and fanatical with an objective picture of the main features of Muslim history and the compulsions of Muslim society.