In the summer of 1977, street agitation by opposition Pakistan National Alliance against rigged election was gathering force across the country when the embattled Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto discreetly visited Maulana Maudoodi,

Jamaat Islami’s founder Amir, at his home in Lahore to seek a political solution to the turmoil. The meeting produced no compromise. Nevertheless, the cordiality that marked it caused sensation as ZAB’s PPP and JI were then seen as sworn enemies of each other.

On 5 July 1977, General Ziaul Haq overthrew ZAB in a bloodless coup and subsequently hanged him in a murder case to rule the country for 11 years, with the help of many member parties of the Pakistan National Alliance, including the JI and the PML faction now in power.

Thirty-seven years later, the country is again witnessing agitation over “rigged election”, though at a much smaller scale and in a vastly changed political atmosphere where all parliamentary parties have come to the aid of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to defend the “democratic system” against Imran Khan’s demand for fresh elections.

JI seems to have had quite a changeover in the meantime. That reflected in the well-disciplined religious party’s three-day conference in Lahore this week.

There, after unsuccessfully trying to mediate in the tussle between Imran Khan’s PTI and the ruling PML-N, JI’s new Amir, Sirajul Haq echoed his coalition partner’s charge that the current political system was corrupt and existed only to benefit the elite class to the deprivation of the vast majority of the ordinary people.

But JI alone can pull the have-nots out of their abject poverty and moral morass, Mr Haq and his colleagues declared at the party gathering and invited industrial workers and peasants to “wage war” against the ruling political elite under JI.

His predecessor, Munawar Hasan, was more specific. He called for Jihad and asked the youth to abhor those who disagree with the term. Indeed, Jihad stands for struggle against any evil – even one’s own evil thoughts.

Non-party observers at the impressive conference, however, were more surprised to learn that Mr Haq took a team of party leaders to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif after the concluding session, supposedly to thank him for the fine arrangements the provincial government made for the JI conference at Minar-e-Pakistan grounds.

However, the venue of their meeting – the central secretariat of the PML-N – left many observers guessing what they really discussed.

After all, despite its vows to “Islamic principles” and “clean politics”, JI is known to have sided and actively cooperated with illegitimate and unprincipled rulers in their patently disastrous policy decision. But it must be said that JI is not the only party to have done so. Pakistan’s political history is replete with such parties and politicians.

“Still, I am at a total loss how could leaders of an admittedly clean-looking ideological party denounce the political elite publicly, holding them responsible for all the ills the country is facing today and then head to meet a leading member of the same elite and hold a joint press conference with smiles all around,” said a young journalist who covered the JI event in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2014