Arshi Saleem Hashmi

Nexus Between Religious Groups and Authoritarian Regimes in Conflicts: Pakistan and Malaysia in Comparative Perspective Arshi Saleem Hashmi

Religious forces and authoritarian regime have collaborated throughout history. If religion is about morality, ethics and high human values, politics is generally about manipulation, lie and the art of possible. Yet whenever unpopular, illegitimate regimes needed support, the clergy extended help, rarely challenging the regimes, thus strengthening clergy-ruling elite nexus. The ruling regimes in both Pakistan and Malaysia have had strong nexus with the religious groups viewing Islamic politics more as an opportunity than a challenge. Pakistan and Malaysia provide us an insight to understand that the use of religion can produce different results in different types of regimes. In Pakistan, military dictatorship used religion to gain legitimacy as well as divert the attention of the people from real economic issues by engaging them in issues like Muslim solidarity, in Malaysia, Islamic principles were used to reform the Malaysian society with equal importance to modernization but the policy also created opponents among the liberal as well as the Muslim parties both complaining about not having enough of any system.