The State of Islam 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.

Timely and unique, this book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the roots of modern Pakistan and the likely outcome of current power struggles in the country.

Saadia Toor is Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.

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