ISLAM is in danger, yet again. The call by religious parties and the Council of Islamic Ideology to force a government retreat on the recently promulgated women’s protection act follows hot on the heels of the countrywide mobilisations that followed the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri. One wonders what will come next.

The recent spate of activity follows a period during which the religious right was in something resembling hibernation mode. Political correctness both in Pakistan and globally demands overt rejection of religious radicalism, and when our own military establishment is going through great pains to sustain an image of zero tolerance towards militant Islam it is to be expected that the mainstream right will follow suit.

Yet seasoned observers know better than to assume the murky links between the establishment and the militant right are a fact of the past. Indeed, while Pakistani officialdom insists that it is committed to abolishing the threat of religious militancy, it also clearly acknowledges that it is the primary interlocutor between the so-called Afghan Taliban and the government in Kabul.

There is desperation in the religious right’s call to arms.

Which is to say that the Pakistani state has not abandoned in toto the tried and tested strategy of using jihadi proxies as and when its perceived needs demand it. Certainly, this strategy has caused tremendous ‘blowback’ within Pakistani society. But the death, destruction and myopia is in fact evidence of just how powerful right-wing forces remain despite the rhetorical constraints that the so-called ‘war on terror’ has forced upon them.

Still, it is not hard to detect a semblance of desperation in the religious right’s recent call to arms. One gets the sense that religious parties and functionaries that otherwise spend a great deal of time and energy opposing one another are closing ranks in the face of what is seen as a longer-term threat to their hegemonic position in the polity.

It is important to bear in mind that the religious right has not always exercised the kind of cultural, economic and political power that it does today. Yes Islam has been the primary source of political legitimacy in this country since the word go, but it was under Ziaul Haq that the religious right came to acquire an influence — veto power, even — that it has not relinquished since.

There should be little pretence that this will change soon — if at all. But it is worth dwelling upon the proposition that reactionary forces are indeed threatened by the prospect of change in the immediate future.

This proposition follows from the perception that a significant consensus is developing within the corridors of power — including GHQ — that the right needs to be cut down to size. Certainly, the twin decisions to go ahead with Mumtaz Qadri’s execution and the passing of the women’s protection act would seem to suggest that the powers-that-be are willing to antagonise conservatives in a way that was unthinkable only a few years ago.

As I have noted already, these recent steps must be weighed up against the fact that state patronage of at least some militant groups continues in some way, shape or form. More generally, Pakistani nationalism is still expressed in an exclusionary religious idiom whereby threats to the nation are almost always depicted as the work of infidels.

Perhaps more importantly, even if there are rumblings at the highest echelons that militate to some extent against the religious right, these represent only contradictions within the structure of power that do not guarantee social transformation. If meaningful change is to take place, the power of the right must be challenged ‘from below’, by a wide cross section of progressive forces with popular support from ordinary people.

It is precisely this lack of a powerful progressive lobby that the recent mobilisation of the religious right exposes. For progressives to take solace in Nawaz Sharif’s vague enunciations of liberalism is nothing more than an indicator of their own weaknesses. A party like the PML-N with a long history of conservatism can hardly be counted upon to rid Pakistan of intolerance and millenarianism.

Take the example of the MQM, which, of course, is also a right-wing party, albeit not of the religious variety. Should progressives be content in the knowledge that the establishment has decided to shake up Karachi’s politics by isolating Atlaf Hussain and forcing the MQM into a measure of retreat? While it can be debated just how much Karachi has benefited from the actions against the MQM, it is clear that the city has not suddenly become a peaceful and progressive haven, happily ever after.

Progressive forces must muster up the capacity to sway public opinion and state policy if we are to harbour any hopes of challenging the right’s hegemony. That is what the latter did during the heyday of the left in the 1960s and 1970s and there can be no gainsaying its success.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2016