Right Word | Religious Radicalisation In Pak: A State-Sponsored Agenda That Threatens Global Peace
The time has come for the international community to hold Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment accountable for the Pahalgam attack
Religious radicalisation is typically driven by a range of factors, including historical animosities, socio-religious divisions, and economic grievances; however, it becomes most dangerous when actively promoted and manipulated by the state for its own objectives. This has been the case in Pakistan. While the country’s founding ideology—the ‘two-nation theory’—can arguably be seen as having inherent elements of religious extremism, it was during the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq that such tendencies fully materialised, with devastating repercussions for both Pakistan and the wider South Asian region.
The late 1970s and 1980s marked a pivotal period in Pakistan’s modern history, as the developments during these decades profoundly transformed not only its own society but also had serious implications for the wider region and the world. This era witnessed seismic events such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing US-backed Islamist militant response, the Iranian revolution which installed a fundamentalist regime, and the military takeover by General Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan.
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Upon seizing power, General Zia initiated a sweeping Islamisation of Pakistani society by enacting laws and educational reforms aligned with a conservative and fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence. He facilitated the rapid expansion of madrassas, especially those affiliated with the Deobandi tradition (a more austere branch of Sunni Islam), which became instrumental in both mobilising fighters for the Afghan Jihad and in advancing domestic social radicalisation.
Professor Eamon Murphy, a prominent scholar on Pakistan, highlights the dramatic increase in madrassas during Zia’s rule, from 900 in 1971 to 8,000 registered and over 25,000 unregistered institutions across the country by 1988. Economic motivations were also at play, as many families, drawn by the provision of free food and lodging, preferred to enrol their children in madrassas rather than formal schools. Furthermore, Zia decreed that madrassa qualifications be treated as equivalent to those from mainstream schools and universities, without enforcing any curricular reform or academic standardisation.
The decade of civilian rule under Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif following General Zia’s death in 1988 witnessed limited attempts to rein in the unchecked power and influence of religious clerics. However, the entrenched role of Pakistan’s military and intelligence apparatus in both domestic politics and foreign policy ensured the continued consolidation of extremist networks. Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment repurposed these radical elements to incite insurgency in Kashmir and to provide support to the Afghan Taliban.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the rise to power of General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani state, under significant pressure from the United States, appeared to initiate measures to curb religious radicalisation, particularly targeting terrorist organisations contributing to unrest in Kashmir. A year after a Jaish-e-Mohammad militant carried out a suicide bombing on the Jammu and Kashmir state legislature, causing numerous fatalities, and following an attack on the Indian Parliament by another Pakistan-linked group, Musharraf formally proscribed several terrorist organisations, including Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
However, this was soon revealed to be largely performative, as Pakistan was repeatedly exposed for facilitating, harbouring, and utilising terrorist groups to advance its strategic interests, especially in relation to India. The 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden by US forces in Abbottabad serve as two of the most prominent illustrations of Pakistan’s widely acknowledged complicity in terrorism.
Alongside its superficial counter-terrorism efforts, the Musharraf regime, in collaboration with the United States, also sought to implement counter-radicalisation initiatives within Pakistan. These included the introduction of madrassa registration and regulatory reforms, alongside the promotion of the Sufi Barelvi tradition of Islam as a counterweight to the Deobandi groups that had come to exert widespread influence across the country. This strategy was later adopted by successive civilian governments following Musharraf, as Barelvi Islam was perceived to embody values of religious pluralism, tolerance, and social harmony.
However, this approach ultimately proved counterproductive, as Barelvi clerics and organisations increasingly adopted extremist stances, most visibly through their militant opposition to perceived blasphemy. The most chilling manifestation of this was the 2011 assassination of Salman Taseer, then Governor of Punjab, who had called for reforms to Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws. His assassin, Mumtaz Qadri—a Barelvi adherent and a member of Taseer’s security detail—was lauded rather than condemned by leading Barelvi figures.
Again, in 2017, the Barelvi group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) led a nationwide disruption by blocking a major highway in Islamabad for three weeks, protesting a minor change in the electoral oath they perceived as undermining the state’s stance on Ahmadi Muslims. The TLP, along with other sectarian and religious entities such as the Ahl-e-Hadith (Salafi), Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, and others, has contributed to mainstreaming religious extremism and the public acceptance of violent sectarianism, hate rhetoric, and mob lynchings driven by blasphemy accusations or aimed at religious minorities.
Pakistan’s long-standing policy of treating terrorist organisations as ‘strategic assets’ or distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ militants to secure geostrategic advantages without engaging in direct military conflict has not only undermined regional stability but has also inflicted severe harm upon its own population. Despite India having made repeated overtures of peace, Pakistan has consistently responded with hostility, as evidenced by attacks in Pathankot, Uri, Pulwama, and, most recently, Pahalgam.
This persistent hostility is a principal reason why promising regional initiatives such as SAARC have failed to fulfil their potential, thereby hindering the broader development and prosperity of South Asia. According to the latest Global Terrorism Index 2025, Pakistan now ranks second globally, having recorded a staggering 45 per cent rise in terrorism-related fatalities and more than double the number of terrorist incidents compared to the previous year.
It is imperative, therefore, that the international community should hold Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment accountable for the Pahalgam attack. Pakistan’s security doctrine and national identity are a threat to peace not only in South Asia but globally as it is known to have become a sanctuary that harbours Islamic terrorists from across the world.
The writer is an author and a columnist. His X handle is @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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