The Sacred Script: Political Discourse and the Construction of Religious Legitimacy in Pakistan
In Pakistan, religion is not merely practiced; it is performed through political discourse, which turns sacred belief into a tool of legitimacy, authority, and exclusion. Political actors routinely invoke religious language not to enlighten but to entrench—rendering religiosity into a spectacle of power.
Religious legitimacy is most often claimed via moral framing. Leaders refer to their movements as "jihad against corruption," "divine mandates," or "fulfilling the vision of the Quaid," drawing on metaphors that sanctify politics and equate dissent with disbelief. These metaphors function as ideological shields, insulating politicians from critique by aligning their agendas with divine or national destiny.
Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model shows how such framing activates shared mental models—when a leader claims to be upholding "Islamic values," the audience is cued to view opposition as un-Islamic. This is further reinforced by semantic binaries: "truth vs. falsehood," "iman vs. nifaq," "reformers vs. traitors." Through repetition, these dichotomies collapse political difference into moral absolutism.
Grammatically, religious discourse in politics is marked by passive divine agency—phrases like “justice will be done,” “the nation will be punished,” or “truth will prevail” shift responsibility from institutions to metaphysical forces, thereby obfuscating human accountability. Religious symbols replace policy logic.
Politicians also strategically deploy intertextuality, quoting the Quran or Hadith out of context to imbue speeches with sacred aura, while simultaneously manipulating religious imagery to signal moral superiority. This turns the public sphere into a quasi-pulpit, where the audience is not a demos but an ummah.
The result is a form of discursive theocracy—a space where political legitimacy is evaluated not through legal or democratic norms but through proximity to religious rhetoric. Minorities, secular voices, and dissenters are automatically suspect—not through law, but through language.
To resist this, Pakistan must reinstate secular-linguistic rationality into political life. The sacred has its place, but when the syntax of power mimics the cadence of prayer, governance becomes prophecy, and disagreement becomes blasphemy. That is not democracy—it is dogma in disguise.
