Jihad, ʿAdl, Khawarij, and the Munir Synthesis in the Multipolar Moment
Bosal, S.K. (2026). "The Walayah Doctrine and the Pakistan Doctrine: Jihad, ʿAdl, Khawarij, and the Munir Synthesis in the Multipolar Moment." SCRA Civilizational Studies Series No. 5. Alvid Scriptorium.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20548585
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~12,000 words · 36 citations · Islamic Political Theology · Pakistan Studies · Multipolar Geopolitics
This paper investigates the theological and geopolitical architecture of the Pakistan Army's strategic doctrine under Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah, reading it through the SCRA zahir-batin framework and the Quranic-Shia theology of Jihad, ʿAdl, and the Khawarij distinction. The paper argues that Munir's policy acts between 2022 and 2026 constitute the institutional reassertion of Pakistan's authentic walayah-Sufi-Iqbalian batin after the Zia ul-Haq Deobandi imposition (1977–1988), which SCRA categorizes as a historically anomalous Ba'alist Capture episode. The primary civilizational struggle in contemporary Pakistan is not internal to the military institution but structural: the Saudi-funded Deobandi civilian political network — operating through JUI-F mass constituency, PML-N–Saudi structural nexus, and direct madrasa/mosque funding architecture — constitutes the ongoing Ba'alist Capture mechanism attempting to colonize the Pakistani state through the civilian political domain. Munir's Fitna al-Khawarij designation (July 2024), read through the five Quranic stations of Jihad and Mutahhari's three-level defense framework, is simultaneously counter-insurgency doctrine, theological delegitimization of the Khawarij-Wahhabi complex, and civilizational claim. The Pakistan–Iran alignment, operating sub-publicly under walayah ontology, represents the geopolitical expression of this civilizational reassertion in the multipolar moment.
The Quranic theology of Jihad is not a single injunction but a five-station progressive disclosure, each station specifying conditions, limits, and teleological purpose. The Khawarij violation is readable against every station. The five stations also establish the ʿAdl teleology as the purpose of all legitimate armed struggle — making Jihad and justice inseparable at the Quranic structural level.
The first permission is granted under three simultaneous conditions: (a) the fighters are being fought; (b) they have been wronged (zulm); (c) the cause is defense of the right to worship. Critically, verse 40 extends the protective scope to monasteries, churches, and synagogues — not Islamic institutions alone. The divine rationale is structural: God's checks-and-balances principle preventing civilizational monopoly. Jihad is the instrument of structural correction, not supremacist conquest.
The proportionality station establishes: (a) the prohibition of trans-limit aggression (lā taʼtadū); (b) the fitna criterion — societal chaos severing communities from their divine orientation is a greater evil than physical killing; (c) the termination condition — when fitna ceases, the Jihad must cease. The phrase "al-fitnatu ashaddu min al-qatl" is the Quranic authorization for the Fitna al-Khawarij designation itself.
The mustazafin station establishes that Jihad carries a positive obligation toward the dispossessed — those whose duʼa for rescue constitutes a divine call upon the capable. This is not a defensive permission but an active duty. The "why should you not fight" (wa mā lakum lā tuqātilūna) carries a tone of reproach toward those who disengage from the defense of the oppressed while claiming Islamic identity.
The ʿAdl station establishes the teleological purpose of both revelation (mīzān: the balance, the criterion of justice) and force (hadīd: iron, the instrument of armed power). They are sent together for one purpose: liyaqūma al-nāsu bi'l-qist — that human society may stand in justice. Force without justice is fitna. Justice without force, in a world where oppressors exist, is incomplete. This station is the Quranic foundation of the SCRA argument that Jihad and ʿAdl are a single divine instruction.
A Jihad that has no termination condition — that defines itself as perpetually ongoing, moves its own goalposts, creates new enemies whenever existing ones are neutralized — has left the Quranic frame and entered the Khawarij frame. The TTP's expansion of its target list from the American military presence (ended 2021) to the Pakistani state itself is detectable at this station as a termination-condition violation.
Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari's systematic elaboration in Jihad al-Akbar and Ensan-e Kamel establishes three nested levels of legitimate defense: (1) Defense of self and community (difāʼ) — corresponding to Q.22:39-40 and Q.2:190-193. (2) Defense of the mustazafin — a duty to defend the oppressed even when not personally under attack, corresponding to Q.4:75. (3) Defense of human values and the divine order — protection of the civilizational conditions in which the divine-human relationship can operate freely: the Quranic mīzān of Q.57:25. Crucially, Mutahhari distinguishes this from conquest (fath): the goal of Jihad is the removal of obstacles preventing free relationship with God, not the imposition of Islam as a political system.
Khomeini's Hukumat-e Islami (1970) addresses the post-Saqifa authority problem directly: the wilayat al-faqih — guardianship of the qualified jurist — provides derivative authority delegated from the Hidden Imam, sufficient to discharge governmental functions including defensive Jihad. Crucially, the Khawarij's original sin was precisely the claim to judge authority through personal text-reading without submission to any recognized jurisprudential chain. A Jihad conducted by self-appointed takfiri commanders with no established jurisprudential chain is structurally Khawarij by definition.
Khamenei distinguishes muqawama (defensive armed resistance against imperial occupation) from fath (offensive territorial expansion). He consistently identifies takfir — declaring other Muslims unbelievers deserving death — as the defining Khawarij deviation, explicitly categorizing ISIS and its affiliates as Khawarij formations. This parallels Munir's Fitna al-Khawarij designation through an independent jurisprudential path. Khamenei frames the multipolar world order as the emergence of the Quranic mīzān at the civilizational level — the structural correction of unipolar hegemony through multiple centers of civilizational authority.
Who may legitimately conduct Jihad during the Major Occultation of the Twelfth Imam (since 260 AH / 874 CE)? Three schools have developed distinct answers with direct relevance to the Pakistan analysis:
All governmental authority including Jihad is suspended during the Occultation. Only the Maʼsum Imam can authorize the shedding of blood in Jihad. The community waits, preserves, and transmits the tradition without claiming governmental authority in the Imam's name. (Contemporary echo: quietist Najaf positions, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani.)
Qualified jurists (fuqahāʼ) may exercise a delegation of the Hidden Imam's authority, including in relation to Jihad. The pragmatist version holds that the community's political circumstances can justify imperfect authority exercising the Jihad function. (Institutionalized in the Safavid state; foundation of Khomeini's wilayat al-faqih.)
The Quranic obligation to defend the mustazafin (Q.4:75) and maintain conditions of ʿAdl (Q.57:25) is not dependent on the authority of the Imam — it is a direct Quranic obligation incumbent on any capable Muslim community. The cause is itself the authorization. This framework provides the theological space within which a Sunni-majority state with a deep Sufi-walayah heritage — but without formal Shia jurisprudential institutions — can act within an ethically Jihad-compliant framework. Munir's Pakistan Army operates precisely in this School C space.
The Khawarij (from kharaja: to exit, to go out) were the first group to leave the umma through unilateral theological judgment. At the Battle of Nahrawan (38 AH / 658 CE), Imam Ali (A.S.) fought and defeated the Khawarij, establishing the military and jurisprudential precedent for the Fitna al-Khawarij designation. Q.49:9 authorizes fighting a transgressing faction (al-bāghī) — not declaring them kafir. This status distinction is fundamental: a transgressor may be fought without being declared outside the umma.
| Criterion | Khawarij Position | Authentic Jihad Position |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Takfir | Declare other Muslims kafir on basis of personal text-reading, without jurisprudential process | Q.49:9 authorizes fighting a bāghī faction — not declaring them outside the umma |
| 2. Authority Chain | Self-authorize through direct text-reading, rejecting isnād, silsila, ijāza | Authority is structured through scholarly transmission chains. Claims outside these chains are structurally suspect |
| 3. Proportionality | Attack civilians, markets, mosques, and non-combatants (TTP: Peshawar mosque 2023, APS 2014) | Q.2:190 prohibits transgression of limits. Q.22:40 protects all places of worship |
| 4. Termination | Perpetually expanding target lists; fitna as permanent mode of existence | Q.2:193 / Q.8:39 specify defined end state. When fitna ceases, fighting must cease |
| 5. Fitna Production | Generate societal chaos; destroy conditions for stable Islamic civilization | Quranic condition is elimination of fitna. A movement producing fitna is conducting its opposite |
| 6. Zahir-Only | Impeccable zahir practices (prayer, fasting) while violating batin principles; reject Sufi transmission and walayah chain | Q.49:14 distinguishes īmān (with batin depth) from islām (external submission without batin) |
| 7. Theological Formation | TTP traces through Deobandi-Wahhabi nexus: ʿAbd al-Wahhab → Deoband → Saudi madrasa funding | Authentic Pakistani Islam: Chishti, Qadiri, Suhrawardi silsilas → Hasan al-Basri → Imam Ali (A.S.) walayah chain; Iqbal's synthesis; Syed genealogical proximity |
Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah's policy record between his appointment as COAS (November 2022) and his Iran mediation role (April–May 2026) constitutes five distinct policy acts, each intelligible within the walayah-Sufi-Iqbalian framework. The "Syed" in his name places him within the walayah ontology by genealogical proximity — descent from the Prophetic House through Imam Ali (A.S.) and Fatima al-Zahra (A.S.).
The formal theological designation of TTP as Fitna al-Khawarij was the first time a Pakistani state institution intervened in intra-Islamic theological debate using a category from Imam Ali (A.S.)'s jurisprudence at Nahrawan. The zahir is counter-insurgency doctrine. The batin is a civilizational claim: the Pakistan Army's authentic Islamic identity is Alid-walayah, not Khawarij-Wahhabi.
The Riyasat-e-Tayyaba (the Righteous State) discourse translates Iqbal's khudi concept into state doctrine. The tayyaba registers on the ʿAdl teleology of Q.57:25: a state governed by the mīzān, where the hadīd (coercive power) is exercised in the service of qist (justice), not for any sectarian or political faction's benefit.
The operation's name is drawn directly from Q.61:4: "God loves those who fight in His cause in rows as though they are a single solid structure (bunyanun marsūsun)." Mutahhari's Level One and Level Two defense operating simultaneously: defense of the Pakistani community against TTP attacks, and defense of the mustazafin in the tribal belt terrorized by the Khawarij formation.
The appointment as Chief of Defence Forces with the honorific Muhafiz-e-Haramain (Guardian of the Holy Sites) signals the army's claim to a position in the pan-Islamic civilizational field that Saudi Arabia has monopolized since seizing the Hejaz (1924). The zahir is a honorific title. The batin is a civilizational counter-claim: the walayah-aligned Pakistan Army, not the Wahhabi-Saudi apparatus, is the authentic guardian of the Islamic civilizational heritage.
Munir's role as back-channel between Washington and Tehran during the nuclear negotiations of 2026 is the geopolitical expression of the walayah convergence thesis. Pakistan occupies the mediator position because it has credibility in both directions: Sunni-majority state with deep US military relationship (zahir); walayah-Sufi-Iqbalian batin with deep Iran civilizational connection (batin).
The Zia episode (1977–1988) was Ba'alist Capture of the institution from the top — a military dictator using Saudi petrodollar flows to overlay Deobandi frameworks onto an institution whose authentic batin was Iqbalian-Sufi-Syed. The institution corrected itself. The Sufi saint veneration culture among rank-and-file never died. The officer corps' reverence for Iqbal (explicitly anti-Wahhabi, anti-Salafi, pro-Rumi, pro-batin) persisted. Munir's doctrine is not his personal theology imposed on a reluctant institution — it is the institution reclaiming its authentic voice after the Zia disruption.
The real ongoing Ba'alist Capture threat is external, operating through three structural pillars:
Fazlur Rehman's network commands 15,000–25,000 Deobandi madrasas with 3–5 million enrolled students, direct Saudi funding bypassing state channels, parliamentary presence, and the demonstrated ability to mobilize street pressure within 48 hours. JUI-F's political leverage does not require electoral majorities — it requires only the credible threat of governance paralysis at critical policy moments. The theological formation transmitted through this network is the direct Deobandi continuation of the Zia-era imposition: Wahhabi-inflected theology, Saudi-source funding, primary loyalty to Riyadh's theological line.
Nawaz Sharif's historical relationship with the Saudi monarchy — Saudi exile (1999–2007), financial dependence during displacement, ongoing investment links — creates structural policy commitments that are material, not ideological. The PML-N's willingness to activate JUI-F as a coalition partner at moments of army-civilian friction gives the Saudi-Deobandi network a civilian political vehicle with national electoral standing and access to the governmental apparatus. Every time the army attempts to push Iran-aligned or multipolar policies, the civilian counterweight is available for activation.
The funding operates at three sub-visibility levels: (a) Madrasa direct funding — bypasses Pakistani education ministry; installs Deobandi curriculum; produces a clerical class with primary loyalty to Riyadh rather than Pakistani state authority or the Sufi-silsila tradition. (b) Mosque construction finance — converts urban mosque networks from Barelvi-syncretic to Deobandi institutional control: theological colonization of the urban religious public square. (c) Charity and welfare networks — build political clientelism independent of electoral outcomes in areas of weak state provision.
The zahir/batin split in contemporary Pakistan does not run through the army. It runs between two distinct institutions: the Saudi-funded Deobandi civilian political network (carrying the zahir of Khawarij-adjacent theology, sponsored by Riyadh) and the Pakistan Army under Munir (carrying the authentic batin of Iqbalian-Sufi-walayah, reasserting the institution's civilizational inheritance). Munir's Fitna al-Khawarij designation names the enemy at two levels simultaneously: kinetic (TTP in the tribal belt) and structural (the Saudi-Deobandi civilian political network in Islamabad and Karachi). It is simultaneously counter-insurgency doctrine, theological delegitimization of the Khawarij-Wahhabi complex, and civilizational claim.
The major Pakistani Sufi silsilas — Chishti, Qadiri, Suhrawardi — all trace their transmission chain through Hasan al-Basri back to Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (A.S.) (see SCRA WP-06, WP-25). This is not a claim that Pakistani Sufis are secretly Shia. It is a claim that the walayah field — ontological proximity to the Prophetic House and its transmitted light — extends beyond formal Shia institutional boundaries into the Sufi silsila system.
Iran operates through formal wilayat al-faqih: institutional Shia jurisprudence, the Imam's authority formally delegated to the qualified faqih, exercised through the clerical state apparatus. Pakistan operates through informal walayah expression: the Sufi silsila as the naʼib deputy structure of the Imam, carrying the walayah light without formal Shia institutional claim. Both are within the same ontological field. The theological language differs; the ontological orientation is convergent.
The Saudi-Deobandi civilian political network imposes structural constraints on public Pakistan–Iran alignment. Any overt security pact would trigger JUI-F-led mobilization framing it as the army delivering Sunni Pakistan to Shia Iran — a charge capable of fracturing political coalition support in the Punjab heartland. Below the civilian political threshold, the walayah convergence operates continuously: intelligence cooperation against shared TTP threats, Iran gas pipeline negotiations, Munir's personal mediation role.
The multipolar transition creates a structurally improving opportunity: as US leverage over Pakistan diminishes, as Saudi Arabia itself hedges toward multipolarity (Saudi-China security agreements, Saudi-Iran normalization of March 2023), and as CPEC deepens Pakistan's structural economic independence, the Saudi-Deobandi civilian network's most effective lever — US pressure activated through Saudi diplomatic channels — progressively weakens. The walayah-aligned batin of the Pakistan Army has a structural advantage the Saudi-Deobandi network does not: it is endogenous to the subcontinent's Islamic civilizational formation. It requires no external great-power patron.
SCRA designates the Zia episode as a Ba'alist Capture event: an eleven-year imposition of Deobandi frameworks onto an institution whose authentic batin was Sufi-walayah-Iqbalian. The roots survived. The overlay is being systematically removed. Munir's Syed genealogy is not his personal credential — it is the institutional symbol of the army's authentic inheritance reasserting itself: the Prophetic House's proximity carried in the leadership's person, expressed in the leadership's theological language, enacted in the leadership's policy doctrine.
The convergence of five policy acts between 2022 and 2026 constitutes a Civilizational Event: the Quranic Jihad framework (five stations) + the Shia theological elaboration (Mutahhari's three levels, School C cause-independence) + the Khawarij distinction (seven criteria, Nahrawan precedent) + the Iqbalian-Sufi-walayah institutional identity + the multipolar geopolitical alignment (Pakistan–Iran sub-public walayah convergence + CPEC + SCO engagement) = a coherent civilizational doctrine that is simultaneously Islamic theology, counter-insurgency doctrine, state governance vision, and geopolitical positioning. Three civilizational consequences if the synthesis holds: Pakistan breaks decisively from the Saudi-Deobandi civilizational orbit; the Pakistan–Iran alignment moves toward increasingly explicit civilizational partnership; the Khawarij designation becomes available as a pan-Islamic jurisprudential instrument for delegitimizing Wahhabi-Salafi armed movements across the umma.
The Pakistan Army's Iqbalian-Sufi-walayah identity established in this paper is the institutional expression of Sacred Civilization. In SCRA's civilizational vocabulary map: Iqbal's Millat (community of conscious khudi development, not ethnic or territorial definition) = Shariati's Umma (community directed by conscious motion toward haqq, the Imam as qibla) = Sacred Civilization. The walayah doctrine — the transmission chain from the Prophetic House through the Sufi silsilas — is Sacred Civilization's ontological infrastructure operating within the Pakistan Army's institutional formation. Munir's synthesis is not merely a counter-insurgency doctrine; it is Sacred Civilization reasserting its institutional presence in a major nuclear state.
The opposing force — Saudi-Deobandi civilian political network, Khawarij-Wahhabi complex, Ba'alist Capture through the Zia Glitch — is the contemporary form of the opposing civilization operating in the Pakistani theater. Era-specific vocabulary: in the colonial period, the same structural opposition wore British imperial dress (Deobandism as colonial theological management, Wahhabi alignment as British anti-Ottoman policy). In the post-9/11 period, it wore War on Terror dress (Islamist extremism as both tool and pretext). In the present multipolar moment, it wears Saudi-financed civilian political network dress, while the Eastern bloc — Russia, Iran — names the underlying structural reality as "Satanism" (Putin, 2022+; Imam Khomeini's "Great Satan" designation as theological statement). SCRA's "Ba'alist" analytical vocabulary and the Eastern bloc's theological vocabulary are two registers for the same structural reality this paper documents at the Pakistani institutional level.
Bibliography (Selected)
Primary Sources — Quranic and Hadith
The Holy Quran. Verses: 2:190-193; 4:75; 8:39; 22:39-40; 49:9; 49:14; 57:25; 61:4.
Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (A.S.). Nahj al-Balagha. Sermons 8, 127 (Nahrawan); Letter 53 (Ahd al-Ashtar).
Al-Tabari. Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk. Battle of Nahrawan account.
Al-Kulayni. Al-Kafi. Kitab al-Jihad sections.
Modern Islamic Scholarship
Khomeini, Ruhollah. Hukumat-e Islami (Islamic Government). 1970. Trans. Hamid Algar. Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981.
Mutahhari, Murtaza. Jihad al-Akbar: The Greater Jihad. Tehran: Sadra, 1985.
Mutahhari, Murtaza. Ensan-e Kamel (The Perfect Human Being). Tehran: Sadra, 1983.
Iqbal, Muhammad. Asrar-e-Khudi. 1915. Trans. R.A. Nicholson. London: Macmillan, 1920.
Iqbal, Muhammad. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. 1930. Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1986.
Secondary Sources — Khawarij and Islamic Political Theology
Madelung, Wilferd. The Succession to Muhammad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Sachedina, Abdulaziz. The Just Ruler in Shiʼite Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Dabashi, Hamid. Theology of Discontent. New York: New York University Press, 1993.
Watt, W. Montgomery. The Formative Period of Islamic Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973.
Pakistan Political Theology
Haqqani, Husain. Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military. Carnegie, 2005. [SCRA critique: Zahir Inversion Error]
Fair, C. Christine. Fighting to the End. Oxford University Press, 2014. [SCRA critique: Origin Erasure + Huntington Assumption]
Lieven, Anatol. Pakistan: A Hard Country. Allen Lane, 2011.
Ahmed, Khaled. Sectarian War: Pakistan's Sunni-Shia Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
SCRA Internal Cross-References
SCRA WP-06. The Indus Thesis. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20467615
SCRA WP-11. Against the Duplicity Thesis. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20543480
SCRA WP-12. The Munir Doctrine. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20543482
SCRA WP-16. The Jinnah Suppression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20543496
SCRA WP-21. The Caliphate Capture Chain. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20543509
SCRA WP-25. The Sufi Court Problem. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20543519
SCRA WP-31. The Safavid Experiment. DOI pending.