Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea

Pakistan and Israel were built on strikingly similar foundations, notes Devji, a scholar of Islamic political theory. Devji utilizes the comparison with Zionism to discuss arguments that “have emerged as the most important and productive ones in the history of Muslim nationalism,” though the “still unfixed boundaries of Pakistan and Israel indicate not only a disdain for the traditional model of a nation state, but also a geographical indifference.” Pakistan, the author explains, owes its existence more to the Muslim merchant class of southern India than to the Muslim royalty in the north, and Urdu, the national language, is not the native tongue of its indigenous people. Likewise, both countries are characterized by a largely secular, pluralistic leadership rooted in a shared religious milieu, coexisting uneasily today with growing clericalism and extremism. A trenchant analysis for South Asian studies scholars, the book presents a wholly different and more nuanced view of Islamic politics than most recent titles. The book also embeds the debate over partition within the broader framework of Indian nationalism. Devji writes that independence for Pakistan was “informed by the desire to remove the problem that Muslims in India, like Jews in Europe, posed to national movements in either place, as much as it was dedicated to winning new states for these minority populations.” (Sept.)