Saudi petrodollars and Zia’s rule hardened Pakistani religious politics

Evidence

The development of a particular kind of political Islam was further stimulated by Pakistan’s increasingly close relationship with Muslim countries in the Middle East: a rapprochement that began in earnest after the oil crisis in 1973, when the oil-producing nations of the region were able to flex their economic muscle on the world stage. The government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto looked to these countries for economic support, but in the process Saudi influence in Pakistan began to increase, with a resultant hardening of religious attitudes and an ambition among Islamic religious parties to take center stage in politics. Bhutto was unable to control these forces, which resulted in his own deposition and execution at the end of 1970s. There followed a decade of military rule under General Zia ul Haq, which saw Bhutto’s rather lukewarm “Islamic socialism” replaced by Zia’s economic liberalization policies—advancing enterprise as the main engine of growth, opening up new sectors to private ownership, and generally following the international economic trends of the 1980s spearheaded by the Reagan and Thatcher governments. In that decade, financial and military aid was forthcoming from the United States as Pakistan’s strategic value was increased again by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, while the economy was also boosted by remittances sent home from Pakistani workers in the Persian Gulf. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 386

Categorization

• XREF: Explains the religious radicalization backdrop of Naqvi’s Home Boy, whose protagonist returns to a changed Pakistan; also ties to the reader’s framing of the two novels as evidence.