Just a day after US President Donald Trump brokered a ‘peace deal’ between Hamas and the Israeli government, the radical Pakistani outfit the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) announced that its leaders and supporters would be marching towards the US embassy in Islamabad. The plan was to hold a protest rally there in support of the Palestinian people. 

Ironically, TLP had more or less remained quiet when Israeli forces were pounding Gaza with bombs. So, understandably, the government of Pakistan questioned the real intention behind TLP’s sudden impulse. After all, the Palestinian Islamist outfit Hamas has been rather forthcoming in accepting some major conditions penned in Trump’s plan. And also, though reluctantly, the far-right Zionist regime in Israel agreed to suspend its hostilities in Gaza. At least for now. 

So what was TLP up to? Its cadres and leadership clashed with the police and damaged public property in their bid to reach the US embassy. Maybe it was a case of late awakening. But here’s the thing: TLP is not a ‘natural’ fit when it comes to issues such as the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict. 

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For years, the issue was only rarely viewed as a ‘religious conflict.’ It was (and still is) a fight for land. In the first half of the 20th century, the Zionist groups that were most active in this regard were largely secular and many even held left-wing views. 

Sectarian outfits in Pakistan, such as the TLP, remain outsiders to the ideological lineage of the Palestinian struggle they claim to defend

These groups were challenged by Palestinian Arabs driven by a nationalism that was an offshoot of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism evolved from a 19th century intellectual and political movement called the Nahda. Nahda sought to challenge European colonialism and a weakening Ottoman Empire by moulding the Arabs into a modern, progressive and culturally united national whole. It was further evolved by Muslim, as well Christian, Arab intellectuals, mainly in Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. 

It is from various Arab nationalist movements that most anti-Zionist Arab organisations first emerged. Until at least the early 1980s, their resolve was rooted in Arab unity and anti-Zionism. Their ideological spectrum ran from far-left to left to centre-left. Therefore, progressive outfits that supported the Palestinian cause in non-Arab Muslim-majority countries became natural fits to the cause. For example, the first government of the left-leaning Pakistan Peoples Party (1971-77) facilitated left-wing Palestinian groups to open their offices in Pakistan and receive funding. The PPP became a natural fit for the Palestinian cause. 

However, from the early 1980s, the secular Palestinian groups started to face resistance from outfits that evolved from the Islamist organisation the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The groups also faced resistance from militant Shiite organisations that were inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. 

MB was formed in Egypt in the 1920s. But it fell afoul of the Arab nationalist regimes that emerged from the 1950s onwards. The regimes repressed the MB and saw it as a reactionary movement. This is when Saudi Arabia began to host and fund the MB. Saudi Arabia bolstered the MB and its offshoots because it saw the secular Palestinian organisations as tools of the Soviet Union and a threat to Arab monarchies. The idea was to strengthen the Islamist groups so that they could weaken the secular/leftist outfits that were dominating the struggle against Israel. The Saudi monarchy wanted the ‘anti-communist’ Islamists to usurp the Palestinian struggle. 

Interestingly, there is now enough evidence to also claim that the Israeli state also began to show interest in Islamist groups in this regard. In October 2023, the Israeli journalist Tal Schneider wrote that, in the 1970s, “Israel permitted the growth of Islamist activity in Gaza.” Israel helped expand a charity run by one Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. By the late 1970s, the charity had evolved into a political movement. Israel viewed this movement as a non-threatening alternative to the militant secular Palestinian groups. The movement’s hostility towards the secular Palestinian forces was encouraged by Israel. 

Yassin was highly influenced by the MB and, in 1987, his movement turned into a militant-political organisation — Hamas. Hamas began to aggressively co-opt Palestinian nationalism by adding a stark Islamist dimension to it. Consequently, the narrative that viewed the struggle as a religious conflict began to gain strength. What’s more, eventually, this narrative was also adopted by the far-right Zionists. 

So, political groups in non-Arab Muslim countries that have roots in or were influenced by the MB and its offshoots also became natural fits to the Palestinian cause. The mainstream Islamist party in Pakistan, the Jamat-i-Islami (JI), is an example. The MB and its many offshoots are inherently Sunni and adhere to what came to be referred to as ‘political Islam’ and/or ‘Islamism’. Islamism draws inspiration from Islamic symbols, traditions and values to pursue socio-political objectives. It largely emerged in the early 20th century. 

Like the JI, most other Islamist parties in South Asia also borrow heavily from Islamism but, unlike the JI, they are not natural fits for the Palestinian cause. For example, Islamist groups that represent South Asian Sunni strands, such as the Barelvi and the Deobandi, have no traction in the Arab world. In fact, ‘Barelvi Islam’ (a kind of folk Islam in South Asia) is frowned upon by most Arabs. And this is the strand that the TLP represents. The TLP is theologically at loggerheads with ‘Arabist Islam’ and is opposed to the Shiites. 

Political Shiite movements that gave birth to organisations such as Amal and Hezbollah became linked to the Palestinian cause because they emerged in Israel’s neighbour, Lebanon, and many Shiite Arabs were once part of various left-wing anti-Zionist organisations. 

The TLP, a radical-populist expression of Barelvi Islam in Pakistan, can only have a rather superficial association with the Palestinian cause because, historically, the cause was once dominated by secular and left-wing Muslim forces, and then by Islamist groups shaped by the political Islam of the MB and of pro-Iran Shiite groups. 

The TLP, on the other hand, was shaped by South Asian sectarian and sub-sectarian fissures, and not by political Islam as such. And neither can militant Sunni groups such as the Taliban claim any natural link to the Palestinian cause because the Taliban’s version of Islam is rooted in the South Asian expression of Sunni Deobandi radicalism. Neither have any political or social roots in the Arab world and certainly none in Arab nationalism.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 19th, 2025