On a related note, how “Islamic” his policies actually were should be evaluated as well, based on fact and not opinion, and definitely not evaluated through a liberal-defaultist lens
Essentially this is an extension of the "no true scotsman" fallacy, no different to how communists justify the failure of communism around the world by saying we haven't had a
true communist regime because you see the state did XYZ and this isn't truly communist in nature.
The fact is that majority of what Zia enacted was in line with political Islamist opinion, was supported by the religious clergy and his Islamist support base, and most importantly done in the name of religion. Therefore we can conclude, in practise this is how the typical religious "revolutionaries" play out in Pakistan, regardless of getting into the nitty gritty technicals to attempt to absolve them of absolutely any ownership.
The religious clergy in Pakistan in particular is infamous for weaponising their religious authority to abuse the system for personal gain, from daily corruption, to sexual abuse in religious seminaries, to politics, and every other domain where they simply have no justification or qualifications to be giving their opinion in. A mullah will speak try to control the education system, the economy, industry, politics; but will have zero expertise in any apart from a religious badge that is irrelevant. An outdated dogmatic mindset that refuses to understand evolving contextual realities and is extremely rigid in its regressive thought to the point of becoming hostile to anyone who challenges their opinion. When you prioritise religious rigidity over domain expertise, you get decay.
The technical hyper-details are in practise irrelevant here, because how it actually plays out in reality is representative of the above. Just like true communism arguments can't be used to absolve the failure of most communist setups, true "Islamic" arguments can't be used to absolve the failure of political Islamist set ups in practise. It's an outdated dogmatic system that is hostile to reforms and modern education.
In this context, if we were to consider secularist, nationalistic, or any non-religious model, the degree of abuse and room for reform is of a far greater capacity because without abusing religious authority, their ability to fool the masses is limited. Religion becomes the perfect tool to pacify the illiterate masses to your own rule, and crush any basic criticism. This is far more difficult to do in non-religious political systems like secular democracies because religious authority does not have the power to stifle or intervene in areas outside of their specific domain.
@VCheng