Pakistani militants of various stripes collectively won just under ten percent of the vote in July 2018 parliamentary elections. Some represented long-standing legal Islamist parties, others newly established groups or fronts for organizations that have been banned as terrorists by Pakistan and/or the United Nations and the United States. The militants failed to secure a single seat in the national assembly but have maintained if not increased their ability to shape national debate, mainstream politics and societal attitudes. Their ability to field candidates in almost all constituencies and in many cases their performance as debutants enhanced their legitimacy. The militants’ performance not only has fuelled debate about the Pakistani military’s effort to expand its long-standing select support for militants that serve its regional and domestic goals to attempting to nudge them into mainstream politics. It also raises the question who benefits most, mainstream politics or the militants. Political parties help mainstream militants, but militants with deep societal roots and significant following are frequently key to a mainstream candidate’s electoral success. Perceptions that the militants may stand the most to gain are enhanced by the fact that decades of successive military and civilian governments, abetted and aided by Saudi Arabia, have deeply embedded ultra-conservative, intolerant, anti-pluralist and supremacist strands of Sunni Islam in significant segments of Pakistani society. Former international cricket player Imran Khan’s electoral victory may constitute a break with the country’s corrupt dynastic policies that ensured that civilian power alternated between two clans, the Bhuttos and the Sharifs, but his alignment with ultra-conservatism’s social and religious views as well as with militant groups hold little hope out for Pakistan becoming a more tolerant, pluralistic society and moving away from a social environment that breeds extremism and militancy. On the contrary, policies enacted by Khan and his ministers since taking office suggest that ultra-conservatism and intolerance are the name of the game. If anything, Khan’s political history, his 2018 election campaign, and his actions since coming to office reflect the degree to which aspects of militancy, intolerance, anti-pluralism and supremacist ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Islam have over decades been woven into the fabric of segments of society and elements of the state. The roots of Pakistan’s extremism problem date to the immediate wake of the 1947 partition of British India when using militants as proxies was a way to compensate for Pakistan’s economic and military weakness. They were entrenched by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s, General Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization of Pakistani society in the 1980s, the rise of Islamist militants in the US-Saudi supported war against Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan, and opportunistic policies by politicians and rulers since that have shaped contemporary Pakistan.