Jama'at-e-Islami Pakistan: Learning from the Left *

Scholars of Islamist ¹ politics have long indicated that many Islamist parties cut their political teeth in combating the strength of leftist secular forces in countries as diverse as Egypt and Indonesia. ² While much has been written about the impact the Islamists have had on leftist and secular forces, there is very little understanding of how this engagement impacted the Islamists. The actual processes and details of this conflict-ridden interaction have not been explored enough to understand the influence it had on the Islamists in terms of their strategies, operations and policies. This article looks at the changes in Jama’at-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan’s stances and policies on feudalism since the early 1950s. In so doing it provides insights into the categories ‘religious right’ and ‘secular left’ which are used frequently in contemporary political discourse and scholarly analysis relating to Pakistan but which first congealed over the course of events from half a century ago.