Democracy and Religion in Pakistan

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan came to power in part by exploiting religion, but today he has come into conflict with religious leaders in order to stay on America's good side. Elections in Pakistan are rigged, but even without that the religious leaders are having trouble.

The Economist explains:

[T]he religious parties in the unruly border areas of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which had backed Mr Musharraf before falling out with the general-president earlier this year, lost ground.

Compounding their fall from grace, the mullahs were further dismayed by a ruling of the supreme court on August 25th that should disqualify many of them from holding public office. The court found that certificates from madrassas, or religious schools, do not fulfil the educational criteria for contesting local elections.

Turning the screw, the court vowed “at an appropriate time” to start hearing a petition filed in 2003 questioning the validity of the madrassa degrees held by nearly 68 mullahs elected to the national parliament in 2003. Their election allowed the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, an alliance of six religious parties, to form an Islamic government in NWFP and a coalition government in Balochistan—the most power held by Islamists in Pakistan's history.

There is no genuine democracy in Pakistan, only a “Pretend Democracy,” to cite a term used by The Economist. Unfortunately, it’s hard to believe that stability in the region would exist without these sorts of underhanded governing tactics.

The choice in countries like this is a dictatorship playing at democracy, or a genuine democracy that votes in a repressive government which promptly takes away democratic freedoms in the name of religious orthodoxy. There is, then, no genuine democratic option and that’s the most tragic fact of all.

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