It has almost become a truism in Pakistan that whenever a ruler's popularity disintegrates, he begins waving the scimitar of Islam. And not once since Pakistan became a nation 51 years ago has this noisy brandishing of faith ever worked. Today, when the country finds itself ostracized after its nuclear tests and teetering on the edge of economic collapse, Prime Minister Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif is reviving the old custom of trying to make the Islamic Republic of Pakistan even more Islamic than it already is. He has introduced a constitutional amendment establishing the Shariah, a 1,400-year-old religious code, as the supreme law of the land.

Even in the best of times, the heady days following Pakistan's birth, introducing Islamic law led to quarreling and confusion among the country's 72 Muslim sects and sub-sects. Nobody could ever agree on a proper interpretation of the relevant scriptures. Now could be the worst of times for Pakistan to try such a feat. Everything seems to be going wrong for Nawaz Sharif. His support of the Taliban militia in neighboring Afghanistan has drawn enmity from Iran and the Central Asian republics. India and Pakistan have intensified their cross-border artillery fire in disputed Kashmir. Nearly bankrupt, Pakistan may run out of foreign exchange by the end of the month, since its reserves of $720 million barely cover one month's import bill. The Karachi stock exchange imploded after the May 28 underground nuclear tests, wiping 750 points--half its share value--off the market (it has since rebounded slightly).

If the nukes didn't scare off foreign investors, popular outrage over the U.S. missile strike last month in nearby Afghanistan certainly did. Diplomats and executives from many Western companies fled Pakistan fearing revenge attacks by supporters of Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden, the intended target of the American raid. In the port city of Karachi, ethnic gangs armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns prowl neighborhoods hunting for enemies. Sectarian rivalry among Muslims has become so fierce that some clergymen now post bodyguards in their mosques to protect against bomb-throwers speeding by on motorcycles. In Karachi, it has become routine for clergymen to be kidnapped. Their mosques are then seized by adversaries who try to convert the prayer-goers to a harsher vision of Islam.

Will a stronger dose of religion cure Pakistan's ills? Many of Nawaz Sharif's countrymen think it could send Pakistan into terminal decline. According to the respected newspaper Dawn, people "just want a little improvement in their lives from the tyranny and callousness of Pakistani officialdom." His opponents, among them ex-Premier Benazir Bhutto, say that the Islamic bill he has proposed is likely to increase that tyranny. One interpretation holds that the measure will anoint Nawaz Sharif as a religious dictator, a supreme arbiter of what is considered good and evil under Islam, above the constitution and the law courts. Nawaz Sharif protests that "corruption and maladministration have become a kind of cancer in the society for which normal legal procedures are not enough." Only a strict adherence to Shariah law--which relies on the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and the Sunnah, a record of the Prophet Mohammed's deeds and sayings--can save Pakistan. That is the message Nawaz Sharif pushes in regular television spots that show him praying in white robes amid thunderclaps and divine lightning.

At present, though, Nawaz Sharif is hoping for a more earthly kind of intervention: he is asking the U.S. to lift economic sanctions, imposed after the nuclear tests, and to push the International Monetary Fund into mounting a rescue. He needs Western aid urgently and has instructed his cabinet ministers to reassure possible donors about his proposed Islamization. "This is not, I repeat, not a shift toward fundamentalism," Information Minister Mushahid Hussain recently told diplomats. But as one of them remarked after the sales pitch, "It was horribly unconvincing."

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