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541
AF
J:
painting
See
art
;
calligraphy
.
Pakistan
(Official name: Islamic Republic
of Pakistan; Urdu/Persian: Land of the
Pure, also an acronym for five homelands
of its people—Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir,
Sindh, and Baluchistan)
Pakistan is a South Asian country. It has an area
of 307,374 square miles, comparable in size to the
states of Texas and Virginia combined. It is bor-
dered by the Arabian Sea to the south, i
ndia
and
k
ashmir
to the east, c
hina
to the north, and i
ran
and a
Fghanistan
to the west. The Indus River
transects the country from the Himalayas in the
north to the Arabian Sea.
Pakistan was created as a homeland for Indian
Muslims through the partition of the Indian sub-
continent following independence in 1947 from
British imperial rule. Its population is approxi-
mately 172.8 million (2008 estimate) and its capi-
tal is Islamabad. Ninety-seven percent of Pakistan’s
population is Muslim, which makes it the second
largest Muslim country after Indonesia. (India has
the second largest Muslim population overall, but
it is not a Muslim-majority country.) About 80
percent of Pakistani Muslims are Sunnis and follow
the h
anaFi
l
egal
s
chool
. Pakistan’s Shii minority
are predominantly followers of t
Welve
-i
mam
s
hi
-
ism
, although it also has a small Ismaili population.
It is also home to a large number of members of the
a
hmadiyya
sect, although they are legally consid-
ered to be non-Muslims by the government. There
are also relatively small numbers of Christians
(about 1 percent), Hindus, and Parsis (Zoroastri-
ans) in the country. Pakistan became the first Mus-
lim nation to elect a woman as head of state when
Benazir Bhutto became prime minister in 1988. She
was reelected in 1993 but was assassinated during
her third campaign for this office in 2007.
The idea that Muslims in the Indian subconti-
nent needed their own autonomous political iden-
tity was first articulated in the early 1930s by the
influential poet-philosopher m
Uhammad
i
qbal
(d.
1938). By 1940 fears of an imminently independent
India that would be dominated by a Hindu majority
compelled the a
ll
-i
ndia
m
Uslim
l
eagUe
to enact
the Pakistan Resolution, and, under the leader-
ship of m
Uhammad
a
li
J
innah
(1876–1949), who
envisioned Pakistan as a liberal democratic state for
Muslims, the Muslim League worked alongside the
Hindu-dominated, but secularist, Indian National
Congress for independence from the British.
When Pakistan was created on August 14,
1947, Jinnah became its first governor-general. In
1949 the Objectives Resolution was passed stating
P
that the constitution of Pakistan would be based
on democratic and Islamic principles. This paved
the way for the 1956 Constitution, which provided
for a parliamentary form of government, though it
was soon followed by a period of martial law. In
the civil war of 1971, the eastern region of Paki-
stan became the independent state of b
angladesh
.
In 1977 Prime Minister Zia-ul-Haq (r. 1977–88)
introduced strict Islamic codes that included obliga-
tory Islamic zakat taxes,
sharia
courts, enforcement
of Islamic punishments, partial elimination of bank
interest, and Islamic-oriented revisions of school
curriculum. Since then, major debates and periods
of political instability have continued to center
around the appropriate role of Islam and Islamic
law in the state. Though sharia remains the guiding
paradigm for Pakistan’s legal system—interpreted
and implemented to varying degrees province by
province—Pervez Musharraf, who took power by
force in 1999, was a moderate on issues of the role
of Islam in the state. He was driven from office by
popular opposition in 2008 and the new govern-
ment also holds moderate religious views.
Since the partition of the Indian subconti-
nent, Pakistan has had strained relations with its
neighbor India. A major point of dispute has been
the contested boundaries of k
ashmir
, which led
most recently to the Kargil war in 1999. In 1998,
the same year that India tested nuclear devices,
Pakistan became the world’s seventh country to
develop nuclear capabilities, and tension between
the two countries took on a new dimension with
the possibility of nuclear confrontation.
Pakistan has been home to or has supported
a number of Islamist movements and organiza-
tions. The J
amaat
-
i
i
slami
, founded by a
bU
al
-a
la
m
aWdUdi
(d. 1979) in India, has been active in
Pakistani affairs since the country’s creation. Pri-
vately managed mosques and madrasas (Islamic
schools) have provided the majority of educa-
tional opportunities in the country as well as a
base for independent, and often oppositional,
Islamist organizations. During the 1980s Pakistan
cooperated with the United States and other coun-
tries in helping the a
Fghan
m
ujahidin
conduct a
guerrilla war against Soviet forces that occupied
Afghanistan in 1978. Millions of Afghans came to
Pakistan as
reFUgees
to escape the turbulence in
their native land, and the refugee camps in eastern
Pakistan provided fertile ground for recruiting
fighters. The Pakistani intelligence service (ISI)
later gave aid to the t
aliban
, a radical Islamist
organization that ruled most of Afghanistan from
1996 to 2001. Since 2001 the Pakistani govern-
ment has supported the United States in its anti-
terrorism efforts in a military campaign against
the Taliban and al-Qaida hideouts along the
Afghan-Pakistani border.
See also a
ll
-i
ndia
m
Uslim
l
eagUe
;
crime
and
pUnishment
; J
amiyyat
al
-U
lama
-
i
i
slam
;
madrasa
.
Megan Adamson Sijapati
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