Delineations of Governance through Islam in Nascent Pakistan: Department Of Islamic Reconstruction and Islamic Law Commission

Abstract

After the creation of Pakistan, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan adopted the 1935 act as its constitution until an indigenous constitution was to be drafted by it. The first institution set up as a governmental body to recommend the measures to make society Islamic at provincial level was ‘Department of Islamic Reconstruction’ in 1947 while the first constitutional body provided by the 1956 constitution was Islamic Law Commission. This paper will attempt to contour the working of both these two constitutional bodies and the findings of this paper will help manifest the approach of the later governments that provided Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology (1962) and Council of Islamic Ideology (1973) in later years. By skimming through Assembly debates it will conclude that the establishment of the Islamic Laws Commission by the 1956 constitution manifests the governmentality by the then governments to develop a web around the ulema, Simultaneously the ulema also wanted their future role in the governmental policy making.