A long tradition of research into political culture argues that greater support for core liberal values leads to a rejection of destructive political activities and reduced support for violent politics. Many contemporary analysts of security policy contend that a lack of democratic values in the Middle East promotes the development of violent political organizations. Unfortunately, there have been few direct tests of the hypothesis that individual rejection of democratic values correlates with support for militant organizations. We conduct such a test in Pakistan using an original 6,000-person provincially-representative survey. We find that strong supporters of democratic values are actually more supportive of militant groups. Consistent with the principle of azadi, this result is driven by those who believe that Muslim rights and sovereignty are being violated in Kashmir. Our results challenge the conventional wisdom and contribute to theoretical debates on the influence of civic culture on political stability and violence.