Post-Islamist Intellectual Trends in Pakistan: Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and His Discourse on Islam and Democracy

Eurocentric and essentialist approaches are applied to make sense of the complex Muslim societies. These approaches reduce complex social processes to certain immutable, fixed and unchanging traits. With such reductive theoretical lens, such readings of Islam, presuppose an inherent rigidity in the nature of Islamic text. When Muslim societies and its social trajectories are understood in the light of such immutable texts, as a logical conclusion, Islam turns out to be incompatible with modern values of liberty and democracy. Islam and Muslim societies are constructed as entities essentially distinct from Europe and the West. Even if a transition from authoritarian form of political order to a more democratic one is intended, it will have to be a secularized form of Islamic democracy wherein the separation of religion and state is ensured. However, in the recent past, a growing number of academic enquiries have challenged the validity of such reductive and essentialist approaches toward understanding Muslim societies and its societal trajectories. Multiple intellectual voices and social trends have been identified that construct harmonious relationship between Islam and democracy, and in more general terms, between Islam and modernity. Some scholars argue that reformation of religious thought followed by the articulation of an "Islamic Theory of Secularism" may pave the way for democratization in Muslim societies. As intermediaries, between the Divine text and the general public, the role of scholars, institutions and social movements is thus crucial in creating bonds of complicity (or otherwise) between Islam and democracy. As an empirical example, this research explores and highlights the emergence of an intellectual community in Pakistan led by a religious scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. The genesis, intellectual biography and unprecedented popularity gained by Ghamidi and his close associates, also reveal mutation, discontinuity and change from their previous religious position. The present paper aims to achieve two humble purposes: to discuss the emergence of a post-Islamist intellectual trend with specific focus on Ghamidi, and to provide a descriptive analysis of Ghamidi's post-Islamist turn, and the way he and his interpretive community construct a harmonious relationship between Islam and Western-liberal democracy. Whereas the recent scholarship focuses on the actual workings of Islamic social forces in different Muslim societies, intellectual discou