IntroductionIslamization may best be viewed as a macrolevel and a multidimensionalprocess of the sociocultural transformation of a society. For its success andsustenance, this process has to occur in the form of an ever-evolvingsociocultural movement in synchrony and in symbiosis with other institutional,politicoeconomic, and sociocultural apparatuses of a society. It therefore isour conviction that a program of Islamization begun at the top levels ofgovernment and implemented by way of legalistic pronouncements orinformational implosion and/or explosion is unlikely to succeed unless itbecomes a self-propulsive pervasive force located in that particular society’sculture industry. Without this symbiosis, it is unlikely that the objectivesof Islamization will ever reach the grass-roots level of that society, adevelopment which would almost certainly preclude its concretization intoa collective but accretive “social cognition,” “social affect,” and “social conation.”As a result, the apparently contra-Islamic socialization potential of the modemculture industry, particularly the fare on entertainment video in Muslimcountries in general and in Pakistan in particular, will continue to undermineand exert a major pull away from the objectives of any serious strategy forthe Islamization of a society.In the relevant literature, a society’s culture industry refers not only toall of its various transmitter categories of intellectual and artistic elites andprofessionals (i.e., educators, journalists, and writers) but also to its mediainstitutions which purvey mass culture through entertainment fare. Thepresent paper, in line with the culturalist approach to media theory, thereforebroadly conceptualizes the mass media of communication in terms of cultureindustry. It is predicated on the assumption that, among others, entertainmentvideo, by which is meant dramatized entertainment, films, and all otherdramatized and fictionalized fare through such video-media as TV, VCR,and cinema, should be and can be harnessed to strengthen, disseminate,promote, and cultivate the Islamic foundations of our culture. The theoreticalumbrella and the empirical evidence already exist in the video-media effects,particularly in the case of television, the tradition of mass communicationresearch. These can be garnered to project, test, and pursue the entertainmentvideo policy directions of what may be called the Islamic enculturation ofPakistani society. While this objective may not be successfully accomplishedoutside of a holistic framework of a total communication policy- a themeI have touched on elsewhere - some realization of entertainment video’s impactpotential is possible. Moreover, this realization can theoretically sensitizeus to those of its possible cultural functions and dysfunctions which mightfrontally impinge upon the Pakistani government’s Islamization efforts ...