The Islamization of Punjab: How a Once-Tolerant Land Was Destroyed and Turned Into a Jihadist Factory

Punjab has, over the past nearly four decades, transformed itself with extraordinary rapidity and adopted features and characteristics that are completely at odds with its past. A culture—both rural and urban—that possessed a certain calm and friendly traditions, whose most prominent aspects included secular attitudes, can sadly be said to have now been destroyed by Islam.

Almost all the prominent and beautiful traditions of Punjabi society have been uprooted and discarded. In their place, a particular kind of Islamic terror has taken hold. The tragedy is that this did not occur through any gradual process of social evolution. Instead, the change has been imposed from above, with the state and its powerful patrons playing a largely supportive role in this transformation.

This specific change, nurtured under the shadow of an artificial and new kind of orthodoxy, first took root in urban society but received its real acceptance from rural society. The orthodoxy and Islamic jihad activity flourishing in the cities appear tainted with financial dishonesty and the pursuit of political influence. In contrast, the Islamic jihad activity and sectarianism visible in rural society draw strength from Punjab’s traditional rural poverty and educational backwardness.

Why Intellectuals and Media Have Failed to Address This Change

The majority of Pakistan’s sociologists, especially those intellectuals whose research has centered on Punjab, have still not taken this very rapid and entirely new kind of transformation with full seriousness. This is why we find very few writings about the new culture and civilization emerging in Punjab over the past three decades.

Many intellectuals do discuss the emergence of jihad activity and jihadi culture in Punjab, but they leave aside the Islamic details that strongly convey the presence of this new Muhammadian culture and have been the direct cause of the spread of jihadi culture. One major reason for this is the lack of familiarity among urban-based researchers with the details of rural culture. They often consider the newspaper reports they receive through daily news sufficient.

Real information about Punjab’s villages rarely reaches city dwellers because individuals affiliated with specific political and Islamic factions possess immense power to influence local newspaper correspondents. Most local correspondents, out of concern for their personal safety, avoid publishing the true facts.

When researchers are consulted, they generally agree on one point: the situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas has given rise to an entirely new Islamic teaching and terror due to conditions in Afghanistan. They easily link the growing Islamic terrorism and violence in those regions to the neighboring country. Those who view matters in a broader context also hold the Pakistan Army and its intelligence agencies ISI responsible for this deadly Islamic transformation.

However, what is happening in Punjab and changing so rapidly is neither presented nor examined objectively. A major reason is the natural inclination of intellectuals and researchers to focus their attention on cities while completely ignoring the villages. Pakistan’s dominant media also hesitates to describe Punjab’s rapidly changing situation, as it does not wish to position itself ideologically as a critic of the powerful right-wing establishment and Punjab’s majority-dominated army.

The Vanishing Traditional Punjab

It can be said with full confidence that the Punjab visible in ancient pictorial artworks and in Punjabi films made in the 1970s no longer exists in reality. That Punjab is now a thing of the past that has quickly folded away, and the new Islamic Terror has completely taken its place.

When one enters the conceptual landscape of the villages, one no longer hears the sweet sound of a flute from afar. Instead, its place has been taken by the whizzing of Kalashnikov bullets AK 47 or the sectarian and jihadi echoes emerging from the new loudspeakers of rapidly constructed mosques and Jihadis madrassas. If no one pays attention to this, that is another matter. But Punjab’s rural landscape is clearly indicating a severe kind of Islamic danger and sounding the bugle of the arrival of that monster which has already begun its work in the tribal areas—and before which the state (Pakistan) appears completely bowed.

Historical Roots of Punjab’s New Composition

The elements that make up this new composition of Punjab originated in the end of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government in Pakistan, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Shia revolution in neighboring Iran. These three major events created a mixture that has colored the whole of Pakistan, but its impact can be most clearly gauged in Punjab and the Frontier region. While the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s initiatives and the war in Afghanistan played the most important role in poisoning Pakistani society with Islamic terrorism, the Shia revolution in Iran and the fear-driven retrogressive policies of Saudi Arabia pushed Muslim sects that had lived normal for centuries into bloody conflict. This is why, today, the intensity of Shia-Sunni conflict can be felt in almost all cities and villages of Punjab. There is perhaps hardly a single district in Punjab where Christian villages, churches, and graveyards have not been targeted by these jihadis. I will try to document this in detail in the future.

The Rise of Powerful Mullahs and Jihadist Networks

On the other hand, the Afghan jihad gave new life to the ulema and Islamic leaders of certain schools of thought in Sunni Islam. It made them economically independent of local landlords and waderas (feudal landlords) in the villages. In addition to weapons and wealth, they acquired armed and trained Muslim youth for the practical demonstration of their power.

The imam of the mosque who, years ago, lived on weekly charity food (usually provided by the whole village on Thursdays) is today a millionaire and is considered a symbol of islamic power. People remain afraid of him because he is not only powerful but also has a large number of orthodox Muslim youth ready to eliminate any opponent.

This is why the biggest threat to the Pakistani state today is considered to be the violent, jihadi, and sectarian organizations and groups whose largest center is in Punjab. If the aid and manpower supplied from Punjab to sectarian killers engaged in countrywide sectarian war, extremists active in the tribal belt, and individuals and groups involved in violent actions in Western Counties, India, Afghanistan and Kashmir are stopped, then the intensity of the conflicts and wars in those areas can be completely ended.

Punjab as the Main Hub of Jihadist Activity

Today, the centers of the largest number of terrorist organizations and groups involved in Islamic terrorism, sectarianism, those who kill and attack Christians and jihadi actions in the region are located in various cities of Punjab. Apart from the warring terror groups active in the Frontier and tribal areas (the majority of which belong to Swat, Waziristan, and other parts of FATA), the bases of all jihadi and Islamic terrorist parties are in Punjab.

The striking fact is that the warring groups active in the Frontier and tribal areas receive the largest share of their manpower from Punjab. According to a cautious estimate, more than fifty percent of the extremists fighting in those areas belong to Punjab. After the American attack on Afghanistan, the majority of Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists arrested were sheltering in Punjab. Leading Al-Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, and Abu Khalfan were arrested from Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, and Gujrat in Punjab, while hundreds of terrorists were arrested from other cities of the province.

A Study of Punjab’s Divisions

To gain a brief overview of how Islamic terrorism and extremist Islamic groups have influenced Punjab’s collective temperament and society, various administrative divisions of Punjab were studied. How Islamic terrorism and sectarianism have flourished in these divisions and what the conditions are today forms a brief but interesting account.

For example, if one examines the Islamic terrorism and sectarianism flourishing in the various villages and cities of the provincial capital—which itself holds the status of an administrative division—astonishing details emerge.

All these Muslim terrorists are assets of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.