As White notes, one of the most striking developments in Pakistan over the last forty years has been the ascendance of violent religious movements that have taken on the state and its citizenry, justifying their actions based on Islamic law. This observation is salient: Pakistan is consistently among the world's most violent countries according to the Global Peace Index (See various annual reports Institute for Economics and Peace, Global Peace Index, https://www.economicsandpeace.org/reports//). Between 6 March 2000, and 23 February 2026, there were more than 18,537 terrorist attacks in which 74,309 people lost their lives, which is nearly fourfold more than the combined Pakistani death toll of 20,000 from all major wars with India combined (South Asia Terrorism Portal, “Yearly Fatalities, Pakistan,” 23 February 2026. https://www.satp.org/datasheet-terroristattack/fatalities/pakistan).

While this violence is not new, beginning in the 1990s, Pakistan experienced newly potent forms of antistate violence from religious movements. Rather than studying the myriad groups that “inhabit the radical fringe,” this book studies some of their most important enablers, interlocutors and competitors: Pakistan's Islamic political parties” (4). In this ground-breaking book, White asks “why these parties enable religiously justified a