A report on Islamization in Pakistan, Pakistan and Aurangzeb

Sharization or Islamization (اسلامی حکمرانی) has a long history in Pakistan since the 1950s, but it became the primary policy, or "centerpiece" of the government of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the ruler of Pakistan from 1977 until his death in 1988.

When Jinnah died, Islamic scholar Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani described Jinnah as the greatest Muslim after the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb and also compared Jinnah's death to the Prophet's passing.

While building up the country's nuclear program, increasing Islamisation, and the rise of a homegrown conservative philosophy, Pakistan helped subsidise and distribute US resources to factions of the mujahideen against the USSR's intervention in communist Afghanistan.

Jinnah had developed a close association with the ulama and upon his death was described by one such alim, Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, as the greatest Muslim after Aurangzeb and as someone who desired to unite the Muslims of the world under the banner of Islam.

In Pakistan, author Haroon Khalid writes that, "Aurangzeb is presented as a hero who fought and expanded the frontiers of the Islamic empire" and "is imagined to be a true believer who removed corrupt practices from religion and the court, and once again purified the empire."

Pakistani-American academic Akbar Ahmed described President Zia-ul-Haq, known for his Islamization drive, as "conceptually ... a spiritual descendent of Aurangzeb" because Zia had an orthodox, legalistic view of Islam.