Chapter Two Revolution, 1979-1987

TO TELL THE truth. I had no interest in politics in the 1 970s or much of the 1 980s.

From the time I had left university in 1 975 until 1983. I had been so single-mindedly

and obsessively involved in international cricket that I had no time to think about much

else. Anyone who has played professional sport would understand how it completely

takes over one' s life. One lives and breathes the sport. so intense is the competition and

hence the focus. Over the years. I came to the conclusion that ' genius' is being obsessed

with what you are doing. So I was too absorbed to worry about the consequences of

Zia's military regime. his slow reversal of Bhutto's nationalization programme. or the

turmoil in neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan. Life continued as normal for most people

- the only ones who really felt Zia' s rule were his opponents. As the captain of the

Pakistan cricket team I had a good relationship with Zia. He used to call me personally

when we won matches and when. in 1 987. he asked me on live television to come back

out of retirement for the sake of the country. I agreed. Only after his regime ended did I

realize his devastating legacy and that. like so many of Pakistan' s leaders. he was

motivated purely by his desire to stay in power and was oblivious to the country's

decline. or the long-term consequences of his policies.

Amidst the steady erosion of the country's political and social fabric. the

Pakistani people drew solace from its success in cricket. During the 1 970s and 1 980s

our team started growing in strength to the point that we could match our former

colonial masters. For teams like Pakistan. India and the West Indies. a battle to right

colonial wrongs and assert our equality was played out on the cricket field every time

we took on England. My friends. and two of my greatest opponents on the cricket field.

Sir Vivian Richards from the West Indies and Sunil Gavaskar from India. were both

examples of sportsmen who wanted to assert their equality on the cricket field against

their former colonial masters. I know that the motivation of the great teams produced by

the West Indies in the 1970s and 1980s was to beat the English. For Viv in particular. it

was about self-esteem and self-respect. the two things that colonialism deprives the

colonized of.

Sport was not the only way to demonstrate post -colonial independence. I little

realized how far the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1 979 would transform the Muslim

world. However. it was a watershed moment in the way the West would view the

Muslim world. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan later that year. putting

Pakistan in the frontline of the Cold War. few of us fully grasped the extent to which

that too would affect Muslim thinking - in the world in general and Pakistan in

particular. I had visited Iran in 1 974 when I went to stay with a school friend from my

time at the Royal Grammar School. Worcester in England. Seeing the economic and

cultural divide of Iranian society and women in miniskirts in the bazaars of Tehran

surprised me. In today's Lahore and Karachi I have seen a similar disparity - rich

women going to glitzy parties in Western clothes. chauffeured by men with entirely

different customs and values. But at the time I had never seen people behave in such a

westernized way in a Muslim country and was shocked by their disregard for the

cultural mores of the masses. I remember the look on the faces of the stallholders in the

bazaars as these women in short skirts sashayed past. The Iranian Islamic Revolution a

few years later was to draw heavily on the support of the bazaaris, who formed the

backbone of a traditional. devout middle-class in Iran that felt threatened by the Shah's

attempts to impose an alien culture upon them and enraged by his role as a puppet of the

West. In Pakistan, however westernized people like me were, when we visited our

ancestral villages or went into rural areas - or even the old city of Lahore - we had to

respect local customs and sensitivities. The women in our family would wear the chador

(a cloth covering the head and shoulders, leaving only the face exposed), or the burka (a

long garment covering the whole body). Even in Lahore my mother always covered her

hair when she went shopping in the bazaar. To this day most women in Pakistan wear

the traditional shalwar kameez with dupatta (headscarf). Only very recently have

younger urban women started to wear jeans.

The Iranian Revolution was a reaction in part to rapid westernization and

secularization campaigns in Iran by Reza Shah (the ruler of Iran from 1 925 until he was

forced to abdicate by the Allied powers in 1941) and then his son Muhammad Reza

Shah Pahlavi. The latter was a brutal autocrat seen to be beholden to the United States

after he was restored to power following a 1 953 CIA-backed coup to overthrow

nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh had had the temerity to

stand up for the rights of the Iranian people and seize the country's oil production,

which had hitherto been controlled by the British government's Anglo-Iranian Oil

Company. Muhammad Reza Shah's sweeping social and economic changes alienated

the poor, the religious and the traditional merchant class who grew resentful of an elite

enriched by the 1 970s oil boom. Meanwhile, there was a growing class of rural poor

who had moved to the cities in the hope of benefiting from the petrodollar-fuelled

economic growth but found themselves unemployed, consigned to the slums and

increasingly under pressure from inflation as the economy overheated.

The revolution led by Khomeini promised to return power to the people and

restore religious purity to Iran. The events of 1 979 in Tehran and the establishment of an

Islamic state highlighted to the world the revolutionary potential of Islam and its power

to threaten the established order in the Muslim world. The overthrow of a tyrant was

welcomed jubilantly by ordinary people in Islamic countries, most of whom were also

suffering under the anti -democratic rule of leaders they viewed as Western stooges

disconnected from the economic realities and religious faith of their people. As with the

Middle East revolts in 2011, a sense of euphoria rippled across the region. The broad

base and strength of a movement that had toppled such a powerful US-backed regime

was also inspiring to people long resentful of colonial interference and Western

hegemony. And it had been achieved through relatively peaceful means, with mass

demonstrations and strikes.

In Pakistan there was tremendous excitement, and I could sense this when I

returned from playing cricket in England in the summer months. Since independence we

had already been governed by four different constitutions. We had run through

parliamentary democracy, Ayub Khan's 'presidential democracy', which was effectively

a military dictatorship, economic liberalization and martial law. Yet here was Khomeini

standing up to the West with a new system that was both Islamic and anti-imperialist.

The political Islam of the Iranian Revolution filled the void left by the failure of Arab

nationalism in the Muslim world. Socialism had been discredited and communism had

never really taken off in a culture where religious faith is such an intrinsic part of life.

As the Iranian slogan went: 'Neither East nor West' ; Khomeini had forged a new path

that owed little to either the Western powers or communist Russia. And he explicitly

presented his ideology as an exportable political solution to the entire Islamic world.

Consequently, the West was terrified the Muslim world had reached a new

turning point. At stake were Western puppet regimes in oil-producing countries like

Saudi Arabia - whose royal family Khomeini openly criticized. In the same way that the

West turned a blind eye to corrupt regimes that claimed to safeguard the free world from

the evils of communism, from then on, autocratic rulers could manipulate Western fears

in order to clamp down on any political opposition in the name of fighting Islamic

fundamentalism. (The 9/11 attacks on the United States further reinforced this

tendency.) It was also at this point that the West started sending NGOs into Muslim

countries to encourage secularization - often in the name of liberating our women or

promoting human rights. Whenever there is unrest in an Islamic country, the old fears

about ' Iranization' or 'Islamization' of the country in question are raised by the West.

Only recently, in early 2011, this happened when the people of Egypt and Tunisia

toppled their dictators. Other countries, too, faced internal dissent but dealt harshly with

it; however, in Yemen and Bahrain, the actions that in Libya would lead to NATO

intervention were allowed to continue as the regimes were deemed pro-Western.

Zia, keen to legitimize his unconstitutional takeover of Pakistan, felt the mood

created by the Iranian Revolution and responded accordingly. His predecessor, the

Oxford- and Berkeley-educated Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had used religion to counter his

Western secular image by pandering to the religious parties. Bhutto's 1 973 constitution

confirmed Pakistan's identity as an Islamic Republic, the teaching of Islam was made

compulsory in schools and a Council of Islamic Ideology was set up to advise on

Islamic legislation. He had declared the Ahmedi sect non-Muslims. His critics, though,

only hardened their demands, campaigning for the introduction of more Islamic laws.

Zia cashed in on the opposition to Bhutto from the religious parties, which equated

secularism with anti-Islamism. He was prepared to go much further than Bhutto,

pledging on coming to power in 1977 to make Pakistan an Islamic state. His version of

the Nizam-e-Mustapha (the System of the Prophet) aimed to overhaul penal codes

inherited from the British by bringing them into line with Sharia law. Emboldened by

events in Iran, from 1 979 he introduced still more reforms, 'Islamizing' the economy

and education system. He tried to introduce interest-free banking, imposed the automatic

deduction of zakat (a proportion of one's wealth which every Muslim has to contribute

annually) from bank accounts and invested in madrassas. The Hudood Ordinance

imposed strict punishments for crimes, including adultery, and its abuse by a corrupt

police and judicial system undermined the legal status of women, especially in the lower

strata of society. Zia revamped so many laws, but failed to introduce true Islamic social

justice; in fact his regime actually promoted inequality and corruption. His political use

of Islam was aimed more at capturing the mood of the time.

Zia also enforced Islamic rituals and promoted traditional dress codes in a bid to

'Islamize' the country; many years later Musharraf attempted to overhaul Pakistan and

turn it into a modern, liberal secular state by encouraging the use of English and

Western dress, which he thought would westernize Pakistan. Zia's 'Islamization' and

Musharraf's 'Enlightened Moderation' failed in their aims, as in such situations people

follow the latest diktats, but inwardly carry on as before. Both Zia and Musharraf failed

to understand that imposing outward observances will neither instil a sense of religious

faith nor propel a country into the twenty-first century.

General Zia's 'Islamization' programme received another boost with the Soviet

invasion of Afghanistan. Practically overnight he became a key Cold War ally of the

Americans, who now forgot their qualms about backing a military dictator (perhaps this

was the origin of the saying that you need the support of the three As to lead Pakistan -

Allah, the army and America). It was another example of the US's ability to pick and

choose when to object to evil despots, or not, while lecturing the developing world on

the universal importance of democracy and human rights. Fearful that the Soviets might

push through Afghanistan to reach the Arabian Sea in the Gulf and choke off vital oil

supplies, the CIA, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states - through Pakistan's Inter-

Services Intelligence, the lSI - funded, trained and armed thousands of militants to fight

them. Many of these jihadis stayed on in Pakistan after the war. unwanted by their own

governments. (Having created these foot soldiers to do jihad against communism. the

United States and its allies hunted them down as al-Qaeda members andjihadis a decade

after the Soviet withdrawal.) At the time. there was a general feeling in Pakistan that the

war against the Soviet occupiers was a just war and people made tremendous sacrifices.

With my journalist friend Haroon Rashid. I met so many young men in Peshawar who

had done time in Afghanistan; 'guerrillas' they might be called now. but they were

heroes fighting against occupation. a romantic cause that drew idealists from across the

Muslim world in the way the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War had attracted

thousands of non-Spanish volunteers in the 1 930s. They became rapidly disillusioned

with the way the groups changed at the end of the war. However. unlike Musharraf after

9/11. Zia never allowed the CIA to spread its network within Pakistan. It was the lSI

who trained the militant groups. funded by the CIA.

Jihad is a vital concept in Islam; indeed it is the most important concept in terms

of an Islamic society. Jihad is about standing up to injustice and it keeps a society alive

and vibrant. In Islam. there are three types of jihad: the first is the individual struggle to

purify one' s soul of evil influences. the second is to strive for justice through non-

violent means and the third is the use of physical force in defence of Muslims against

oppression or foreign occupation. A Muslim must stand up for justice. for any human

being's rights. regardless of their religion. When a society does not stand for justice. it

dies. Two million people marched against the Iraq war. because they felt it was unjust;

were they Muslims. they would have called this protest jihad. After all. the Quran

repeatedly points out that ' God loves not aggressors'. And if everyone in a society

stands up for justice. then their rulers have to listen. In the 1 980s the concept of jihad

became glamorous because of the fight against the Soviets; now it is a word associated

with terrorism. There remains nothing wrong with the concept of jihad. a struggle for

'doing the good and forbidding the evil'; but like all noble concepts it can be misused.

For many men drawn to Afghanistan. this was a clear-cut case of helping the Afghans

fighting foreign occupation. The tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan faced for

the first time in their history an influx of foreign fighters. gathered from the Muslim

world to fight the Russians. Thousands of Saudis. Yemenis. Egyptians. Algerians.

Tunisians and Iraqis flocked to Afghanistan. often passing through Pakistan. trained by

the lSI and funded by the CIA. A Saudi billionaire who had sacrificed a life of luxury to

fight for the Afghan people was one who drew particular admiration. He was Osama bin

Laden; my friend the lawyer Akram Sheikh remembers seeing him at a reception at the

American embassy in Islamabad in 1 987.

I went to a fundraising ball for the mujahideen in 1 983 at the Cafe Royal. a

bastion of London's wealthy elite once frequented by Winston Churchill and Oscar

Wilde. It was a very fashionable cause to support. with campaigners in the UK including

Lord Cranborne. an old Etonian Conservative MP. and in the United States. Joanne

Herring. the Texan socialite portrayed in the book and film Charlie Wilson 's War. The

legendary Pashtun pride. courage and lack of self-pity inspired their backers. In 1 985.

Ronald Reagan famously introduced members of the mujahideen as 'the moral

equivalent of America's founding fathers' during their visit to the White House.

Amongst them was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. leader of the Hezb-e-Islami political party

and paramilitary group. A key figure in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets and the

main recipient of foreign funding for the cause. he is now waging a jihad against NATO

forces in Afghanistan. who as far as he is concerned are foreign occupiers just as the

Russians were. He is now wanted by the United States for participating in terrorism with

al-Qaeda and the Taliban. and termed by the State Department a 'Specially Designated

Global Terrorist'.

Pakistani Pashtuns living along the Durand Line, which (when it was drawn up in

1893 by the British to mark the border between Afghanistan and what was then British

India) had split the tribes, have always felt the repercussions of the tumultuous events in

Afghanistan. About 1 00,000 people a month cross to and fro, the border meaningless to

them. People in the tribal areas therefore felt it their duty both as Muslims and Pashtuns

to join their brethren in the fight against the communist infidels. There was a flood of

weapons into north-west Pakistan. Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of what was

then the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), described the Pashtun in the tribal areas

as natural warriors with every man armed. Now the tribes had access to more

sophisticated weapons. As arms went one way, heroin flowed the other. On their journey

from the port of Karachi to Afghanistan, many of the weapons dispatched by the CIA

disappeared into the local markets. Karachi ended up becoming one of the most violent

cities in the world while Kalashnikov culture hit Pakistan in general. and the tribal areas

in particular. The trucks which were used to carry the weapons were then filled with

heroin extracted from poppies cultivated in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border area

and sent back to Karachi. Pakistan became the world's largest conduit of heroin and the

number of heroin addicts in the country rocketed.

By 1 982 the Afghan jihad was receiving annual aid of $600 million from the

United States and another $600 million from the Gulf states. The Saudis' funding for the

Afghan jihad allowed them to promote Wahhabism, the doctrine of the dominant

Islamic sect in Saudi Arabia. Over time its puritanical beliefs have influenced the tribal

areas' longstanding Pashtun traditions. The growing number of madrassas or religious

schools also affected local religious culture. According to a report by the International

Crisis Group, between 1 982 and 1 988 more than 1 ,000 new madrassas were set up,

many by radical Sunni parties - sponsored by various Arab countries - which were

involved in the Afghan jihad or were political partners of Zia. Even US aid money was

used to promote jihadi culture. Textbooks were published in local languages by the

University of Nebraska at Omaha in the United States to help indoctrinate young minds

in the madrassas and refugee camps in the ways of 'holy war' and hatred of the

Russians. The Pakistan government should never have allowed these outside influences

in to establish these groups in the country; Shia-Sunni violence especially can be dated

from this point and grew dramatically in Pakistan. This sectarianism did a lot to

undermine the position of the jihadi groups at the end of the Soviet occupation. Three

million Afghan refugees flooded into Pakistan, a country still ill-equipped to look after

even its own people. Local living standards dropped as these huge communities of

refugees competed for jobs and resources. Unlike Iran, where they were restricted to

refugee camps, in Pakistan the refugees were allowed to move anywhere. I have to say

though that the way ordinary Pakistani people shouldered the burden of such an influx

of people puts to shame European countries for the fuss they make over accepting

refugees. The Afghans themselves did their best to retain order in the camps through

their powerful tribal structure.

Zia's eleven-year rule was a time of great prosperity but not because of any

government policy; Pakistan averaged 6 per cent growth a year in the 1 980s as the

Afghan war brought dollars both in aid and easy credit. Moreover the remittances from

hard-working Pakistanis abroad shot up during this period. It is estimated that between

1 975 and 1 990 some US$40 billion came into Pakistan. Had this money been invested

in health and education rather than in useless consumption and extravagance, the

country would not be in its present situation, but under Zia corruption passed

manageable proportions. He used the money flooding in for the war to buy off political

opponents and to fund new political cronies who would support his rule. Through

complete control of information, the graft within the military hierarchy was hidden. But

Zia's worst legacy was that in trying to keep Bhutto' s PPP out of power he

manufactured alternative political forces, strengthening both extremist groups and the

military at the expense of democracy. In doing so he also allowed his own cronies to

make money through corruption.

This was the period when Nawaz Sharif, twice prime minister of Pakistan (1991-

93 and then 1 997-99, after which he was forced into exile for some years), was literally

manufactured as a leader. First the iron foundry his family had started and which was

lost to nationalization under Bhutto was returned to his father by Zia, then he was

allowed to build his business empire by using his position as Punjab's minister for

finance. When he was elected Punjab's chief minister he did the same. Working from

the principle that every politician has a price, he dished out state resources to buy

politicians and become head of a political party, Pakistan Muslim League, and later the

Islamic Democratic Alliance, which had been cobbled together by Zia's lSI. According

to an affidavit to the Supreme Court by the head of lSI at the time, General Durrani,

Nawaz Sharif (amongst other politicians) received 3.5 million rupees from them.

The general's 1 985 non-party elections propelled corruption to heights then

unknown in Pakistan. Since candidates were not affiliated to parties, they had to be lured

into Zia's King's party through material incentives, like plots of state land, loans from

nationalized banks, permits and lucrative government contracts. The polls were a

disaster for Pakistan, creating a culture of corruption and sowing the seeds for much

trouble to come.

I might have been more focused on my career at the time, but it pained me to

watch the steady decline of my country from the 1 970s. Spending my summers in the

UK playing professional cricket enabled me constantly to compare Pakistan with a

developed nation, and it was demoralizing. Whilst in the UK the institutions were

stronger than the individual. in Pakistan powerful individuals abused the state

infrastructure for their own ends. I know it hurt them to admit it, but often I would hear

the elders in my family saying how things had worked better under the British. Rule of

law, meritocracy, the bureaucracy - all were more efficient under the British, who on

the whole had kept a tight rein on corruption. My parents' generation felt so let down by

their ruling elite. They had had such hope and pride in Pakistan at its creation but each

year their frustration and disappointment grew. Some of the first generation of Pakistani

politicians, like Sherbaz Khan Mazari, the son of a tribal chief from Baluchistan, and M.

Asghar Khan, the first head of the Pakistan air force, campaigned for years to keep the

flame of Jinnah and Iqbal's dream alive. Both spent time in prison or under house arrest

after opposing Zia and Bhutto and both have written about their bitter disappointment in

the direction the country took.

Like many others from my background I would complain about the state of the

country but would not lift a finger to do anything about it. I was from that privileged

class that was not affected by the general deterioration in the country. The schools we

went to had an imported syllabus, so if education for the masses stagnated we were not

touched by it. We did not have to worry if the hospitals were going downhill because we

could always afford to go abroad for treatment. And if there were power breakdowns,

we could buy generators. (By 2011, most of Pakistan would go without electricity for

twelve hours a day.) If the government departments were corrupt, then it was all the

easier for us to bribe them and have anything illegal we wanted done. In any case we

were always likely to have the necessary government connections to remove any

stumbling blocks. If the general public suffered, well it was bad luck for them. I was

even more fortunate than the privileged class, as being a cricket star in a cricket-mad

country, all doors were open to me. So I did not have to struggle for anything and life

for me could not have been easier.

Although I took pride in my Muslim identity, 'Islamization' in Pakistan did not

bring me closer to my religion. In fact it had the opposite effect. By nature I always

hated being forced to do anything so Zia' s imposition of Islamic injunctions upon us just

made me want to rebel. When I saw Islam being used for political purposes it only

deepened my disillusionment. For someone like me who did not have much

understanding about Islam, whenever the country's corrupt leadership professed to be

devout Muslims, I felt it was Islam that was at fault, rather than the leadership. You see

something similar happening nowadays where hardliners believe that only a radical

form of Islam will save the country, arguing wrongly that we need to change the way

religion is practised, rather than the way our country is run. Moreover, in the late 1 970s

and 1 980s the government -controlled television channel constantly had so-called

religious scholars talking about Islam. Most young people would simply switch it off.

But it was the hypocrisy that put most of the educated youth off Islam. People expected

an Islamic state to have high moral standards.

Events in Afghanistan and Iran dampened any hopes for an Islamic solution for

Muslim countries still finding their way in the post -colonial world. In Afghanistan,

infighting between the warlords amidst the mayhem left in the wake of the Soviet

withdrawal in 1 989 came as a bitter disappointment. The Afghan jihad leaders, glorified

as religious warriors, now behaved like criminals - resorting to extortion and murder in

their battle for personal power. So many had died, so many ordinary foot soldiers had

made great sacrifices, but their leaders betrayed them. The Taliban, which as a group

first rallied in order to rid the people of the chaotic tyranny of the warlords, initially

gave a semblance of rule of law to the war-ravaged country. But with their

unenlightened version of Islam, their inability to understand the essence of the religion,

combined with aspects of the harsh rural Pashtun culture, they began to look

increasingly oppressive. They refused to tolerate any other viewpoints. Somebody could

be declared un-Islamic and punished for something as trivial as not having a beard.

Meanwhile, the sorry descent of the Pakistani jihadi groups after the end of the war in

Afghanistan into sectarianism and religious bigotry also took the shine off the religious

idealism of the late 1 970s and early 1 980s. During the Soviet-Afghan war, both the

Saudis and the Iranians had supported sectarian militant groups in Pakistan. In its wake

these groups turned on each other, unleashing Sunni versus Shia violence. For most

people this was completely against Islam, which preaches tolerance towards other creeds

and faiths. Even Iran, which had aroused such expectations in the Muslim world,

disillusioned those looking to Tehran for a lead on democracy Muslim-style. In

particular, people were nervous about the power of Iran's Guardian Council of ruling

religious leaders - which had the power of veto over democratic decisions. Again, this

was completely contrary to the democratic message inherent in the Prophet's (PBUH)

teachings.

Democratic principles were an inherent part of Islamic society during the golden

age of Islam, from the passing of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and under the first four

caliphs. But after the fourth caliph - Hazrat Ali, the fourth successor to Muhammad's

(PBUH) leadership, who ruled over his vast empire, from Egypt in the west to the

Iranian highlands in the east - democracy disappeared from the Muslim world.

Hereditary kingship replaced the budding democracy of the Medina State and only in

the twentieth century did it make a reappearance in the Muslim world. (In the eighteenth

century, Shah Waliullah attributed the decline of the Mughal empire in particular and

Muslims in general to the institution of monarchy, which, according to him, was

degenerative and bound to decay.) Today in the majority of the Islamic world there are

sham democracies which have not given freedom to the people, hence the urgency and

anger of the revolutionary movements spreading across the Middle East in early 2011.

An Islamic state has to be a democracy and a meritocracy. In an ideal Islamic society

there should be no hurdles in the way of a man achieving his God-given potential.

Islamic legal discourse covers both spiritual matters and the rights of an individual in

everyday life. On the one hand it deals with prayer. worship. fasting and pilgrimage. On

the other. it protects the most basic human needs and rights expected under civil law in

the West - the rights to life. religion. family. freedom of thought and wealth. An Islamic

state also guards against the executive accumulating too much power by emphasizing

that even a ruler is not above the law. Of the first four great caliphs after Muhammad

(PBUH). two ended up in front of a judge in a court of law. Hazrat Ali himself lost a

case against a Jewish citizen because the judge refused to accept the testimony of Hazrat

Ali's son. In Islam. since all sovereignty belongs to Allah both the executive and the

people have to stay within the limits of His Laws. The founding fathers of the American

constitution also strove to do the same by making the constitution supreme. This is why

when Jinnah was asked in 1 947 about the constitution of Pakistan. he said its basis

would be the Quran.

Justice. compassion. welfare and equality. along with democracy. are at the heart

of Islam. yet we saw non-Islamic Western states having greater ethical and moral norms.

When I arrived in the UK in the 1970s it was the first time I had seen a proper welfare

state. Coming from Ayub Khan's Pakistan. I was amazed by the level of social security.

I felt like the Islamic scholar Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). who said on his return

from a trip to Europe to his home in Egypt: 'I saw no Muslims in Europe but I saw a lot

of Islam.' and of his homeland. 'There are a lot of Muslims here but no Islam.' This

quotation is perhaps even more relevant today. as the spirit of sharia (Islamic law) is

more visible in Western countries than in the Muslim world. Until I started educating

myself about it. like the majority of Western-educated people in Pakistan I too believed

sharia to be some medieval set of laws irrelevant to our times. It conjured up images of

fanaticism. women in veils. terrorism. intolerance and the abuse of human rights. Part of

this stems from the prejudice in the Western media about Islam. a prejudice that dates

back to the Crusades. Unfortunately it must also be blamed on the extremely

unenlightened interpretation of Islam by certain Muslim regimes and groups.

In theory. the Islamic state should be a welfare state. That is why I find it strange

that in Pakistan people who stand up for Islamic values are called rightist. Islamic values

actually have more in common with leftist ideologies. in terms of social equality and

welfare. Hazrat Umar. the second caliph of Islam. who ruled from 634 until his death in

644. set up the first true welfare state in the history of mankind. even introducing

pensions. Widows. the handicapped. orphans and the unemployed were registered and

paid from the state treasury. Moreover. the Quranic injunction of zakat. which exhorts

Muslims to give 2.5 per cent of their wealth to the poor and to charity. meant that it was

compulsory for citizens of an Islamic state to look after the vulnerable. The idea of

setting up waqf (welfare trusts) that ran orphanages. hospitals. madrassas and sirais (free

accommodation for travellers) long preceded the concept of trusts in Europe. Yet today

Europe has the best social security system. particularly in the Scandinavian countries.

and even the United States spends billions of dollars a year on the welfare of its people.

Sadly the vast majority of Muslim countries have no welfare system at all. The poor in

Pakistan have no safety net other than their own families or tribes. They cannot afford

education. health or justice. According to the UNDP (United Nations Development

Programme). 54 per cent of Pakistanis face 'multi-dimensional deprivation'. meaning

they lack access to proper education and health facilities and a decent standard of living.

Almost two-thirds of the country lives on less than US$2 a day and about 40 per cent of

Pakistani children suffer from chronic malnutrition. How can Pakistan be called an

Islamic society?

Returning in the winter to Pakistan after playing cricket in England through the

summer. I watched the changes in my country with the nagging anxiety of someone who

saw it deteriorating each time I came home. Yet I never thought of leaving. I could

never imagine another home but Pakistan. Nor did it even enter my mind at this stage to

enter politics. In fact I could not think of anything worse. By the early 1 980s, like most

of the privileged class, I was coming to the conclusion that, since Pakistan's problems

were so many and so insolvable, the best thing to do was to just look after myself.

Besides, what could politics possibly give me? I had the life that many young people, in

Pakistan and elsewhere, dreamt about - I was a rich and glamorous cricket star, jet-

setting all over the world. Politics was considered a dirty business for those who could

not do anything else. Most of the students from my school who went into politics were

hopeless at both academic subjects and sports. Usually they belonged to feudal families

with political ties. No one thought of politicians as selfless people who wanted to make

Pakistan a better place to live in. Neither did I take much interest in social work or

charity. Sure, I attended fundraising dinners every now and then, but hardly ever

because I was touched by the cause of a particular charity; more because of the social

occasion. I hardly ever gave zakat, feeling I had done my duty to society once I had paid

my taxes.

Despite this, it was around this time I began to contemplate that there could be a

God. It had nothing to do with Pakistan's 'Islamization' but it something to do with

cricket. By 1 982 I was close to my peak as a cricketer; I had been playing all year round

for almost seven years. During this time I began to observe a phenomenon that players

called luck. There were times when I would be in great form yet would not have much

success, whereas at other times I would be feeling lousy and yet do well. I also found

that in closely fought contests there was usually one point that would tilt the contest in

favour of one team. Sometimes this would have nothing to do with playing ability. For

instance, many times during my cricketing career an umpiring mistake or bias had cost

one team the match - even the series.

There were other times when a contest was being won by a team and some non-

cricketing phenomenon like rain would tilt the game in the other team's favour. The toss

of a coin also sometimes made the difference between winning and losing. And a

peculiar phenomenon which only pace bowlers would appreciate is that sometimes a

ball just does not do anything, no matter how helpful the conditions, while at other times

a ball will swing in unhelpful conditions. This was because of the way it was stitched

together. Then of course a ball could become soft or out of shape and would not respond

to the most skilful bowler, again influencing the outcome of the match. On several

occasions I would also observe that a batsman would play as if he had a charmed life

and was destined to score runs on that particular occasion. He would make mistakes,

take unnecessary risks, invite catches, look as if he was about to be got out any second,

but end up making runs and being successful. I began to realize that in sports no matter

how good I was or how hard I tried, success was never guaranteed. It is important to

stress, however, that players who had ability, guts, diligence and determination were

consistently successful. but there seemed to be a zone beyond which players were

helpless, and it was called luck. Over the years I began to ask myself the question -

could what we call luck actually be the will of God?

The other thing that made me feel there could be a God was the vulnerability

every sportsman feels regarding injuries. A sportsman can train for months to prepare

himself for a big event, yet a slight muscle tear can result in all the hard work going

down the drain. As a fast bowler I had to be in perfect muscle condition before a match.

Several times I played with half injuries, not sure whether they would worsen during the

match or gradually improve. This again was an area out of my control. In 1 982 I was at

my absolute peak as a fast bowler in terms of physical strength, experience and skill and

was poised to go for the world record for the highest number of test wickets. I was so fit

and strong that I felt nothing could stop me. This was a point in my life when I used to

wonder how people could get old. I just could not imagine that I could ever lose my

fitness and strength to age. I felt invincible. In one year I had got over ninety test

wickets in just thirteen tests - almost a world record. I had got there through sheer

passion and hard work and never relied on anyone but myself. If I had injuries. rarely

would I go to a physiotherapist. relying instead on exercise to help me recover. The

Pakistan cricket team was rapidly becoming a force in international cricket. We had just

thrashed Australia and India comprehensively. Just at that point I got a stress fracture in

my shinbone and could not bowl for the next two and a half years. During this time the

majority of the doctors I saw felt that I would never bowl again.

My whole world came crashing down. Only an athlete can understand the shock

of a potentially career-ending injury. It was the most devastating thing that had

happened to me in my life so far. I also lost the confidence acquired through my success

in cricket. Success always creates jealousies in certain quarters and all this came out

now. There was a spate of nasty articles against me. A couple of players who would not

have dared to cross me when I was fit took the opportunity to put the knife in. feeling

that I was finished and it was safe to vent their animosity. I used to deal with such

people by performing on the field and shutting them up. Now I felt defenceless and had

no clue how to deal with the situation. I became a recluse and in my mind made it into a

huge crisis. But with hindsight it was a storm in a teacup. Much later I read a book by

the eminent cricket writer and historian David Frith about how many cricketers had

committed suicide once they could no longer play cricket. Whilst I was never in danger

of that. I understood their torment; not knowing whether I would bowl again made me

feel extremely unsure and insecure about my future.

In such a state of mind I saw an astrologer and a couple of clairvoyants. Until

then I had never believed anyone who claimed to be able to tell the future and frankly I

had never needed to. I had so much self-belief that I felt I could achieve anything

through my own talent and hard work. I was never one of those sportsmen with trivial

superstitions about objects or habits that would bring me luck in a match. My experience

with both the astrologer and the clairvoyants was highly unsatisfactory; most of what

they said was wrong. I vowed that I would not bother with them again. In my state of

uncertainty and vulnerability. despite all my doubts. I would turn to God. especially

when. on the long and painful road to recovery. I would start feeling twinges in my

shinbone. Twice I had bowled too soon without waiting for the bone to heal properly

and both times the crack reappeared. The third time I was careful but whenever I felt

pain I was never sure whether I would make it or not