The State of Islam Culture And Cold War Politics In Pakistan
, by Toor, SaadiaNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780745329901 | 074532990X
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 8/15/2011
The State of Islam tells the story of the Pakistani nation-state through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, in order to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the rise of militant Islam across the world. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined 'political' realm, The State of Islam highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This added dimension allows Saadia Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxism and nationalism was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right.The authThe author uses the tools of cultural studies and postcolonial theory to understand what is at stake in discourses of Islam, socialism and 'the nation' in Pakistan. Among other things, The State of Islam seeks to explain how Pakistan went from being a place where the strategic battle for hegemony was fought between two secular forces - the liberal nationalists and the Marxist cultural Left or 'Progressives' - to one where the national discourse has become increasingly defined by the agenda of the religious right. Toor argues how this was directly tied to the Cold War context in which political Islam was advanced, along with the marginalisation and active repression of the organised Left and attempts to marginalise its alternate visions of Pakistani society.