Unfortunately, some of the most virulent and vocal apostates (murtaddun) these days are of Pakistani origins.
The fact that many feminists are able to openly showcase their degeneracy isn’t exactly helping this sad state of affairs either.
Of course, that being said, we must also keep in mind that the Pakistani population is quite significant in number, which, as per the latest estimates, lies between 230 and 240 million. Additionally, those under the age of 30 make up almost two-thirds of Pakistan’s populace (64%, which is roughly 150 million). Thus, the real surprise here is the fact that these apostates and rabid feminists are just an extremely miniscule fraction of a percentage.
It goes without saying that they are having their voices amplified by liberal money.
But the question we should all be asking is:
Are the Pakistani youth becoming more religious, or are they becoming less religious?
Considering how MuslimSkeptic has many readers throughout South Asia, this is a question that kept being brought up in relation to our recent statistical analyses pertaining to the rising religiosity rates among Arab youth and the youth of Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as the fact that the Turkish youth have admirably been resisting secularization.
There are no surveys or polls available which focus on the Pakistani youth in particular. However, we can analyze some of the data that is accessible in order to gain a general understanding of the situation or, at the very least, trends.
We should note here that we chose Pakistan in particular as the focus of this article, rather than other South Asian countries, because the Muslim self-identification rate there is the highest (with the Muslims in India of course being a minority).
Muslims in that region obviously differ in a wide variety of aspects, including religious practice. In fact, even within Pakistan you could potentially break things down further on provincial and ethnic levels and whatnot. Yet, we believe these statistics should, more or less, help us towards trying to ascertain general trends in religiosity among the Muslim youth of the region.
Hijab and Urban Female Students
If you wish to measure the levels of religiosity within a society, you will find a good indicator in the behavior of its womenfolk, especially in the way they dress, as this indicates not only their own personal decisions but also social trends, stigma, etc.
Things like this becomes even more fascinating when, rather than looking at women as a whole, you focus instead on the urbanized women and even more so when you focus on the urbanized female students in particular, as this showcases future trends at a more basic level.
And it seems that we at least have some good news to start with. In 2019, The News International, one of the prime English-language newspapers in the country, released an article titled “Trend of hijab, headscarf on the rise among urban female students: survey.”
The article discusses a survey that was carried out by Pulse Consultant over a period of 10 years (from 2008 to 2018), involving urban female students between the ages of 16 and 28.
We read:
However, trend of “Hijab” (In common terms – which drives from Arab world) increased more than double in young urban females (9 percent in #Y2008 and 25 percent in #Y2018). On the other hand – trend of ‘Dupatta on shoulders’ (Not covering head) has decreased almost three times (34 percent in #Y2008 and just 8 percent in #Y2018).
Trend of “Complete Face Cover” and ‘Niqab- where eyes are open” is also encouraging among young females. Young urban Pakistani female students – who don’t covered head or are “Without Dupatta” are just 2 percent in the society.
The fact that the number of women covering their hair has almost tripled is quite reassuring, especially when you consider that this is in relation to urban students. Rural students would certainly be even more “conservative,” and this would be the case even more so with rural non-students.
Considering that this was a documented trend, there seems to be nothing to indicate that these numbers have gone down now, 5 years later. In fact, we can probably safely assume that these numbers have increased further since then.
And, as we shall see towards the end of this article, the Pakistani woman does seem to be somewhat of an “anomaly” in terms of secularization.
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What the World’s Largest Socio-Cultural Survey Says
World Values Survey (WVS) is the world’s largest socio-cultural survey. It describes itself as follows:
The survey, which started in 1981, seeks to use the most rigorous, high-quality research designs in each country. The WVS consists of nationally representative surveys conducted in almost 100 countries which contain almost 90 percent of the world’s population, using a common questionnaire. The WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed, currently including interviews with almost 400,000 respondents. Moreover the WVS is the only academic study covering the full range of global variations, from very poor to very rich countries, in all of the world’s major cultural zones.
It carries out its surveys on a regular basis. What we’ll be looking at is “Wave 7,” which covers the period between 2017 and 2022, focusing on Pakistan in particular (you can also navigate the website in order to find data about other countries too).
After downloading the PDF file, we find hundreds of questions on a wide array of issues, but our focus here will be on religion.
On page 102, we find the following question:
Q289CS9– Do you belong to a religion or religious denomination?. If yes, which one?
We also find the following graph:
A staggering 98.3% self-identify as Muslims. What is even more interesting, however, is that the percentage of those who identify as Muslim increases as the age range decreases. An absolutely whopping 99.4% of those under the age of 29 identify as Muslim, followed by 98.2% for the 30-49 age category and 97.5% for those aged 50 and above.
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So far, based on these statistics alone, there seems to be nothing to really indicate whether the youth are becoming less religious or more irreligious.
It is also worth noting that the late Ronald Inglehart, an American political scientist who was the director of WVS since its inception and who passed away in 2021, had also noted that religiosity in the Muslim world (he included Pakistan but was speaking more generally) hadn’t changed over the years.
Here’s what he wrote in his final book, Religion’s Sudden Decline: What’s Causing it, and What Comes Next?, published by Oxford University Press in 2021 (pp.85-6):
The Muslim-majority countries are a special case. The World Values Survey provides data from 10 such countries that cover a time span of at least 10 years (with a median time span of 16 years). These countries show the highest absolute levels of religiosity of any major cultural group; all of them have mean scores near the top of the 10-point scale, as Table 7.1 indicates. But they are not becoming more religious. (There is little room for further growth.) Moreover, although we find large religiosity differences between birth cohorts in high-income countries, age-linked differences are very small in Muslim-majority countries. Among the cohort born between 1924 and 1933, 79 percent say that God is very important in their lives (choosing “10” on the 10-point scale). Among those born between 1994 and 2003, 76 percent make that choice.
Notice the terminology:
The Muslim world is “not becoming more religious” because “there is little room for further growth.” Subhan Allah! Such is the already high level of religiosity throughout the Muslim world!
And this is coming from a man who was one of the foremost specialists in this field…
I wonder why he hadn’t witnessed the supposed “tsunami of apostasy”?
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Notice also how he mentions “age-linked differences are very small in Muslim-majority countries,” essentially saying that age doesn’t really matter here. Almost a century later, and there has barely been a change in levels of religiosity.
Here is the table he refers to, which once again includes Pakistan, along with a few other countries:
The highest “drop” is found in Jordan and Morocco, but this is relative in the sense that it is a small drop (less than 0.5) and mainly due to the fact that they both had an almost-perfect score of 10 (like Indonesia).
The rise in Turkey, on the other hand, is noticeable.
Note also how the mean score for the Muslim world also remains the same.
So we could perhaps, once again, safely assume that Pakistan’s youth too is not becoming “irreligious” on any sort of mass scale, which likely explains the plethora of articles regarding the so-called “radicalization” of Pakistani youth (a simple Google search yields dozens of articles of this nature and not only on websites but also in research journals).
Yes, due to liberal propaganda and assistance, you’ll certainly see more and more liberal activists, which includes but is not limited to antitheist activists.
But—and this is the entire essence of this article—they will remain an infinitesimal and miserable minority considering the rest of the country’s population, and this is despite all the efforts and money invested by international individuals and organizations in an attempt to try and popularize them.
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On a concluding note, even though the focus of this article was the Pakistani youth in particular and not Pakistani women, we had hinted earlier towards how Pakistani women present counter-intuitive results when it comes to secularization trends (and again, despite not having the statistics to back it up yet, we’d trust that this would apply equally for most of the Muslim Ummah).
So let’s examine the data that a brother compiled from the same WVS “Wave 7” which we have been utilizing. Here’s the graph, followed by his analysis (we have uploaded the graph here as a separate image just in case his Twitter account gets deactivated or the tweet is deleted for whatever reason so we still have access to the numbers):
Counter-intuitive stats: In Pakistan, women who are more educated tend to be more religious & nationalistic, & less 'secular.' The trend is surprisingly linear—most educated women display the highest levels of religiosity & nationalism, & the least secularization (and vice versa) pic.twitter.com/XwIWVU3W0p
— Yavar Sultan (@SultanYavar) February 13, 2023
All we can say and repeat is: al-hamdu lillah—all praise is for Allah alone.
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Are we pro female college education now? Really wanna know.
Same patterns were observed with Turkish women as well. If Imaan is considered alone ignoring the social impact, then current stance against female college education are counter-intuitive. Of course social impact can’t be simply ignored, but if MS team could address this point in a future article, that would be great.
education is fine as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of faith and family. And let’s be honest here, the fact that the higher-educated women are more religious has nothing to do with the education they get in their colleges, because other Muslim countries (like Turkey, Tunisia, Kazakhstan) does not show such linear trend across the categories. Most likely, in some countries, the higher educated you are, the more easily you are going to be exposed to Islamic contents. Less educated people..
Have less sources for their information, which are usually limited to tv media, newspapers, etc. (which are heavily biased and has a lot of government influences). They are also more likely to take whatever information that they receive at face value as long as it comes from self-proclaimed “experts”. The internet exposes one to differing views. And even in religious countries where the trend is more linear, the picture is sometimes not that clear. For example, in my country Indonesia..
The number of Muslim who strongly agree Islam is the only correct religion is the highest among the higher-educated group (because of the above reasons) but the same is also true for the “disagree” and “strongly disagree” categories, since the education in Indonesia involves borderline indoctrination of the state ideology Pancasila that supports the existing secular government and depicts anyone who wants Sharia Law as extremists who intends to destroy “unity of the people.” Point is, It depends
on a lot of factors and education that you receive.
Can you please increase the limit for people to comment at least 6 or 8 times please.
And word limit should be lifted. In the old days in this site, there were no word limits.
Out side of KPK and Balochistan, the Islam and culture of Sindh and Punjab is a heavy mix of shirki and mushriki elements. In fact Orthodox Islam is usually associated with Northerners who are constantly dipicted as extremists in Pakistani film and media run by Punjabis and Sindhis.Muslims of Sindh and Punjab suffer from a serious case of cognitive dissonance due to the large Hindu ethnic kin influnce across the border in India which they adopt and propagate as “culture”. Example…
The issue of dowry, dahez/jahez, a Hindu mushriki tradition widely practiced in Punjab and Sindh where the bride is expected to shower gifts on the groom because she should consider it an honor that a man has decided to marry her. A slight short in gifts can nullify marriage and bring shame to her family.Meanwhile the Northerners who expect mahr for their daughters are labled by these people as “daughter sellers”. There is so much more, esply Hindu misogynistic shirki elements…
They punish women of accused males by the order of panchayat. Women are order to be paraded naked,gang raped as justice. At every streer corner there is a local baba, fakir, pir, malang, literally worshipped as god-men who have the most vile mushriki beliefs. Who are adored even by the elite. This obvious violation of Islamic tenets, munafiqat is used by Marxists in the North to justify their anti Islam stance.They point out the “Shariah for thee, not for me” (Afghanistan) as hypocrisy.
The Marxists in the North point out this double standard, tolerance for Hindu mushriki culture, and the dipiction of Northerners as extremists by Pakistani establishment as nullification of Islamic Ummah.They point out to the current war in Waziristan/North by Pakistan as proof that Pakistan and its ruling ethnic Indic majority Punjabis/Sindhis cant or dont want to entirely swallow the Islam pill themselves but celebrate its imposition on others i.e. Afghans.Shariah for thee, not for me.
If you look at muslims in the northern Indian subcontinent, in terms of culture, clothing, language, and religion, there is lots of like Tajik and Afghan influence.Historically, there were lots of rulers of like Afghan and Mongol origin, and there are many families who are of Afghan origin.Considering the historical context, and how in general Afghans are superior when it comes to religion to north Indic muslims perhaps it would be better if Pakistan becomes ruled by Afghans again.
Even before Islam spread in the region, you had the whole Aryan invasions where people of non indic origin ruled over the more indic people, it is like there is a natural hierachy going on here.Considering how north Indian muslims were unable to make a proper Islamic state, were conquered by the British, and how Afghans failed to be conquered, and were able to establish a state that wasn’t influenced by Liberalism, and these other religious and historic factors, Pakistan and North Indian
Muslims should be ruled by foreign Afghans, similar to how Turks during the Ottoman empire times ruled over non Turks.
I have no problem being ruled by muslim.But islam must be first and foremost,and islam on the understanding of salafs must be aqaaid. But there must be place for cultural diversity.
North Indian does not rule pakistan.It is punjabis,sindhi,baloch,pakhtuns and kashmiri who run pakistan.Mohajir are simply powerless in both pakistan and bangladesh.
One thing all these statistics ignore is the presence of Ghulat Shi’ite people. Turkey has hidden Shi’ites. At best, 25% of Pakistan’s population is Shi’a (I’m probably exaggerating but there is Shi’ism in Pakistan). But in most statistics, these blatant differences are ignored conveniently.
“If you wish to measure the levels of religiosity within a society, you will find a good indicator in the behavior of its womenfolk, especially in the way they dress, as this indicates not only their own personal decisions but also social trends, stigma, etc.”Plus the fact that the way the women dress says alot about the gheerah of the men. When the womenfolk dress (and behave) modestly this tends to be indicative of weak or no gheerah among the males. Gheerah is strongly linked to imaan.
modestly = immodestly
“Unfortunately, some of the most virulent and vocal apostates (murtaddun) these days are of Pakistani origins.”True. But how many are Sunni? Sarah Haider is
Sarah Haider is of Shiite beackground. Raheem Kassam is of Qadiani background. Many of them are like this. Shiites are particularly overrepresented among murtads. The term ex-Muslim is thus very misleading.
The claim that the Rafidhi are infidels is as meaningless to them as it would be to you were you to be called an infidel by them, but in reality, that is how it really is.
The rule of thumb is: any ‘ex-Muslim’ was either a Rafidhi or an Ismaili or a Qadiani. And there are Hindus and Christians who pretend to be ex-Muslim while in reality, they know nothing about Islam.
Belonging to Pakistan myself something’s that i can confirm is thay Pakistanis are strict Muslims the liberal or secular group is less than 10%But here’s something I’d disagree that certain So called journalist such as Syed Muzammil shah and Pervaiz hoodbhouy and some other’s. They actually are trying to convince youth out of religion. Taking example if The ones i have mentioned above Muzammil and Hoodbhouy :Muzammil Recommends Reading Atheist philosophersHoodbhouy uses science
Most of these atheist are rafidhi shia,and majority of apostate comes from their creed.Alongwith from ghulat.Ahl us sunnah need to guard from both ex and non ex rafizi.
Having lived in Pakistan and toured several Arab countries, the Pakistani population is more religious minded than Arab populations and definitely far more religious than the Turkish population. The reason you notice Pakistani liberals more is because they carry out their activism in English and so you can access and peruse their content. Both religious and liberal Pakistanis have an inferiority complex to the English language. Whereas Turkish and Arab liberals do not suffer from this.