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The State of Islam

The State of Islam

Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan

by Saadia Toor

Studies Pakistan through the lens of the Cold War and the War on Terror
This book tells the story of Pakistan through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the global rise of militant Islam.

Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly defined ‘political’ realm, Saadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This extra dimension allows Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxists and liberal nationalists was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right.

Saadia Toor is Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She is the author of The State of Islam (Pluto, 2011).

'A deeply informed study of Pakistan's unfinished journey, marked by the historical suppression of its vibrant Left. Read it, argue over it, and be part of the journey to renew Pakistan' - Vijay Prashad, author of the The Darker Nations, and co-editor of Dispatches from Pakistan 'Reveals a country that is nothing like the hotbed of Islamic extremism and military dictatorship we read about constantly.This book is a powerful antidote to reactionary stereotypes of Pakistan that dominate academic research and popular media' - David Ludden, Professor of History, New York University, author of India and South Asia: A Short History
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Consolidating the Nation-State: East Bengal and the Politics of National Culture
3. Post-Partition Literary Politics: The Progressives versus the Nationalists
4. Ayub Khan’s “Decade of Development” and its Cultural Vicissitudes
5. From Bhutto’s Authoritarian Populism to Zia’s Military Theocracy
6. The Long Shadow of Zia: Women, Minorities and the Nation-State
Epilogue: The Neo-liberal Security State
Notes
References
Index
Published by Pluto Press in Jul 2011
Paperback ISBN: 9780745329901
eBook ISBN: 9781783711758

135mm x 215mm