Foreign Policy Concepts of the Islamist Organisations of Pakistan in the 1970s – 1990s: Specifics and Dynamics

Abstract

The article examines foreign policy settings that Islamist parties of Pakistan developed during the last three decades of the XXth century. The rise of Islamist forces around the world and the enhancement of their role within the global community, that began at that time, are still going on, in some form or other. In order to better understand this process one will find it beneficial to study the case of Pakistan – the state where Islamists fairly early began to express interest in global politics, having to face rather practical problems in this respect. Pakistani Islamists’ perception of foreign policy was formed at the crosscurrents of two factors under the influence of subjective circumstances, stemming from the specifics of Pakistan as a state. The first factor is the niche occupied by Islamists in Pakistan’s inner politics; the second one is the role ascribed to religion in the development of inter-state connections between Islamabad and the rest of the world. Having determined the contents of these factors as well as their combined influence on the foreign policy perception by Pakistani Islamists, we come to the conclusion that, due to the interdependence between Pakistani authorities and Islamist organisations, the latter focused their attention on the discourses that were in line with official state policy.