Green Energy
Five years ago I came across an article in the WSJ that reported fundamentalist Islam was taught in the public schools. It wasn't just a few madrassas or an isolated few who "hijacked Islam" as Mr. Bush tried to tell us. It was virtually the whole nation that simply saw this as their religion. Today the WSJ has an article called "The Myth of Moderate Pakistan" which tells us:
In this venue, we have repeatedly brought this state of affairs to the readers notice--often in a very blunt and straight forward manner. We have argued that there aren't different Islams although some Muslims are lax or ignorant of their religion. The myth of moderate Islam is becoming harder to maintain. The WSJ gets credit for bringing this debate to the general reader. It's a start. We need an open debate that doesn't rule out, from the start, all critical expositions of Islam.
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Green Energy
Pakistan - Moderate?
Five years ago I came across an article in the WSJ that reported fundamentalist Islam was taught in the public schools. It wasn't just a few madrassas or an isolated few who "hijacked Islam" as Mr. Bush tried to tell us. It was virtually the whole nation that simply saw this as their religion. Today the WSJ has an article called "The Myth of Moderate Pakistan" which tells us:
It's time to bury the myth of moderate Pakistan. You know the one: the notion, repeated ad nauseam in magazine articles, think-tank reports and congressional testimony—as though saying it often enough will make it true—that Pakistan is an essentially tolerant country threatened by a rising tide of fundamentalism. Here's a news flash: The tide has risen.Read the whole article here.
The most recent reminder of this came last Wednesday in Islamabad, when suspected Taliban militants shot dead Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's 42-year-old minister for minority affairs and the only Christian in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation's cabinet. His crime? Supporting the repeal of a barbaric blasphemy law that makes insulting the prophet Muhammad punishable by death.
The law is often used to settle scores with hapless religious minorities, especially Christians such as Asia Bibi, an illiterate peasant sentenced to hang last year after she allegedly badmouthed the prophet during a row with Muslim coworkers. Bhatti's assassination comes two months after a bodyguard murdered Punjab Gov. Salmaan Taseer for visiting Ms. Bibi in jail and speaking out against abuse of the law. ...
Islamist parties may not garner large-scale electoral support, but Islamist ideas are widely tolerated by mainstream political parties. The major opposition party, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, flaunts its closeness to sundry Islamists, including Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organization of the international terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Ostensibly secular, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party supported both Kashmiri militancy and the Afghan Taliban in the past. In its current incarnation it appears permanently cowed by the country's legion of vocal fundamentalists. President Asif Ali Zardari failed to attend the funerals of either Taseer or Bhatti. His government has made it clear that it will not touch the controversial blasphemy law. Interior Minister Rehman Malik declared that he would personally kill anyone who dared blaspheme Muhammad's name.
As for Pakistan's undeniably brave activists and intellectuals, unfortunately they appear to have more admirers overseas than among their compatriots. Hand-wringing in the pages of Dawn and the Friday Times, two of the country's leading English-language newspapers, has not prevented Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer's murderer, from becoming a national hero. ... By now the reasons for Pakistan's predicament are well known. They include the intolerance embedded in the nation's founding idea of a separate "land of the pure" for Indian Muslims, the malign shadow of Saudi Arabia on religious life, blowback from the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, and the overwhelming influence that the army and its thuggish intelligence wing, the Inter-Services Intelligence, wield on national life. The army's very motto, Jihad-fi-Sabilillah, or jihad in the path of Allah, is an exhortation to holy war.
In this venue, we have repeatedly brought this state of affairs to the readers notice--often in a very blunt and straight forward manner. We have argued that there aren't different Islams although some Muslims are lax or ignorant of their religion. The myth of moderate Islam is becoming harder to maintain. The WSJ gets credit for bringing this debate to the general reader. It's a start. We need an open debate that doesn't rule out, from the start, all critical expositions of Islam.
- Islamic Mob In Muslim-occupied India Demands Arrest Of Christian Girl With Down's Syndrome
Islamic depravity on full display in Pakistan. A Christian girl in Pakistan with Down's Syndrome has been accused--by a rabid mob of Muslims, no less--of desecrating a copy of the Koran. Other Christian families in the area have reportedly been threatened...
-
Asia News: Extremist group announces suicide attack to kill Asia Bibi by Jibran Khan Pakistani intelligence says Moaviya group is planning a suicide attack against Sheikhupura Prison, where the woman has been held since 2009. In Lahore, the first hearing...
-
Front Page Mag: Jihad Strikes a Blow in Pakistan Posted by Nichole Hungerford For the second time in three years, the beleaguered nation of Pakistan has lost one of its most prominent secular reformers to Islamic radicalism. Salman Taseer, governor of...
- Pakistan: Taliban-linked Cleric Offers $5,800 Reward For Anyone Who Kills Asia Bibi
Asia Bibi A hardline, pro-Taliban Pakistani Muslim cleric Friday offered a reward for anyone who kills a Christian woman sentenced to death by a court on charges of insulting Islam.The sentence against Asia Bibi has renewed debate about Pakistan’s...
- Italian Cajones
National Post: Italy to present UN resolution on religious minorities... Agence France-Presse September 13, 2010 – 2:58 pm ROME – Italy will present a resolution on the protection of religious minorities at the next United Nations’ general assembly,...