The islamization process in Pakistan is at the core of the contradictions and identity conflict of Pakistan. It is the permanent attempt to rewrite the history whose founding fathers intended to make the homeland for the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent, much the against the will of the clergy. However it is also an instrument of perpetuation in power of a largely secular military, which constantly manipulates Islamic symbols.

Although widely discussed, the process of islamization in Pakistan has remained relatively limited. No elected legislature went beyond the expression of the idea of the supremacy of the Islamic law. No elected legislature ever passed a somewhat substantial provision. Despite an increasingly strong, or at least vocal religious pressure, the constitution and the legislation of the Pakistani state are still based on a compromise between modernist institutions and ever more pressing religious demands, yet still limited. The supremacy of the Sharia is regularly reaffirmed, yet its implementation does not progress.

The presentation will analyze the impact of the islamization policies, less however on the legal and constitutional system than on the economic, political and social life of Pakistan. Starting from the observation that the islamization process is more limited that it may seem, the presentation will draw on to say that this process reinforces more than it challenges the existing political and social order, and its most salient political expression, the current military regime, by preventing, on the one side the emergence of any real alternative political project and, although in a more pragmatic manner, by bringing back in mainstream politics the fraction of the social body which could possibly be tempted by more radical means of actions.

In this perspective, four dimensions will be more specifically studied: 1) The evolution of the role of religious movements and parties within the Pakistani state; 2) The relationship between these same religious movements and parties and the Pakistani establishment; 3) The specific role of the madrasas in this relation; 4) The relation the religious parties entertains with democracy.

Frederic Grare is a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He will lead a project assessing U.S. and European policies toward Pakistan and, where appropriate, recommending alternatives with Ashley J. Tellis and George Perkovich. Grare will focus on the tension between stability and democratization in Pakistan, including challenges of sectarian conflict, Islamist political mobilization, and educational reform. Grare also will facilitate interactions between U.S. experts and officials and European counterparts on the main policy challenges in South Asia.

Grare is a leading expert and writer on South Asia, having served most recently in the French embassy in Pakistan and from 1999 to 2003 in New Delhi as director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities. Grare has written extensively on security issues, Islamist movements, and sectarian conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also has edited the volume, India, China, Russia: Intricacies of an Asian Triangle.

His most recent publications include: "India, China, Russia: Intricacies of an Asian Triangle, with Gilles Boquerat"(eds), (New Delhi, India Research Press, 2003); "Pakistan and the Afghan Conflict, 1979-1985: At the Turn of the Cold War" (Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2003); "Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent: The Jamaat-i-Islami" (New Delhi, Manohar, 2001)

Grare has an advanced degree from Paris Institut d'Etudes Politiques and received his Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Dr. Grare's talk is the first seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

Colin Kahl is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in international relations, international security, American foreign policy, civil and ethnic conflict, and terrorism. He will be joining the faculty in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University in the fall of 2007. His current work focuses on U.S. military compliance with the Law of War in Iraq. His research on the topic has been published in Foreign Affairs ("How We Fight," November/December 2006) and International Security ("Rules of Engagement: Norms, Civilian Casualties, and U.S. Conduct in Iraq," forthcoming). His previous research analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries. His book on the subject, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, was published by Princeton University Press in March 2006, and related articles have appeared in International Security and the Journal of International Affairs. From January 2005 to August 2006, Kahl was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow conducting research on Law of War issues at the U.S. Department of Defense, where he worked in the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations. He has also been a consultant for the U.S. government's Political Instability Task Force (formerly the State Failure Task Force) since 1999. He received his BA in political science from the University of Michigan in 1993, and his PhD from Columbia University in 2000. In 1997-1998, he was a National Security Fellow at Harvard University's John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.

David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. One of his later books, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980), used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. He is a graduate of Stanford University (BA, history) and Yale University (MA, PhD, American studies).

If the twentieth century is remembered as a century of war, Asia is certainly central to that story. In Northeast Asia, where issues of historical injustices seem to have generated a vicious circle of accusation and defense, overcoming historical animosities has become one of the most important issues for the future of the region.

Last year, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest daily paper in Japan, conducted an unprecedented year-long project analyzing the responsibility of Japanese leaders in Pacific war of World War II. The results of the project were published in August in the newspaper and then in a book that was published, both in Japanese and English in late 2006. Mr. Tennichi will discuss the project and the paper's findings. The newspaper articles can be found at Daily Yomiuri.

In 2003, Shorenstein APARC hosted a conference on issues of historical injustice in Korea. The conference produced a book, released in November 2006, titled Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience. Our director, Gi-Wook Shin and Chunghee Sarah Soh, who wrote one of the chapters of the book, will present their research in the second panel.

2:15 - 3:45 Panel One

"Who was Responsible?: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor"

Presenter:

Takahiko Tennichi, editorial writer, Yomiuri Shimbun

Commentator:

Mark Peattie, visiting scholar, Shorenstein APARC

4:00 - 5:30 Panel Two

"Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience"

Panelists:

Chunghee Sarah Soh, professor, anthropology, San Francisco State

Gi-Wook Shin, director, Shorenstein APARC and associate professor, Sociology, Stanford University

Commentator:

Charles Burress, interim bureau chief, East Bay bureau, San Francisco Chronicle

You can read the Financial Times review of the Yomiuri Shimbun book at Financial Times Review

This is a special event within the CDDRL Taiwan Democracy Program. In this panel discussion, three leading scholars in the field of China studies will address the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China from a long-term perspective.

Ramon H. Myers, senior fellow emeritus, was curator of the Hoover Institution's East Asian Collection for nearly three decades. He now is responsible for building the Hoover Institution's Chinese Archives and Special materials. He has written numerous books and articles related to Chinese economic history, Taiwan political and economic history, Japanese imperialism, and East Asian international relations. His most recent book, co-authored with Jialin Zhang and published by Hoover Institution Press is titled The Struggle Across the Taiwan Strait: The Divided China problem (2006).

Chih-yu Shih teaches cultural studies, political psychology and China studies at National Taiwan University and National Sun Yat-sen University. His recent publication includes Autonomy, Ethnicity and Poverty in Southwestern China: The State Turned Upside Down (2007), Navigating Sovereignty: World Politics Lost in China (2004), and Negotiating Ethnicity in China: Citizenship as a Response to the State.

Jialin Zhang is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He received his degree at the Moscow Institute of International Relations in 1960, and served as a senior fellow of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, PRC. His academic appointments include visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, Institute of International Economics in Washington, D.C., Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, etc. He is author and co-author of several Hoover essays, China's Response to the Downfall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, An Assessment of Chinese Thinking on Trade Liberation, U.S.-China Trade Issue after the WTO and the PNTR Deal-A Chinese Perspective, Some Implications of the Turnover of Political Power in Taiwan, The Debate on China's Exchange Rate-Should or Will it be revalued?