I’ve said before that I think people who believe Pakistan to be a Musharraf away from Islamic theocracy to be wildly overconcerned, considering that the main conflict in Pakistan is between secular conservatives and secular moderates. This story serves as further evidence for my view.
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Wait, what? Musharraf isn’t even around anymore, dude.
Benazir Bhutto (RIP)’s party is calling the shots from a government perspective, Army excluded.
Still, an encouraging story.
More relevantly, the DO have tribal/fundamentalist forces poking at their border (and inside their border). Musharraf, via his intelligence/security was more than happy to fund them and make use of them. The Lawyer Movement (I love it, by the way) has no truck with that shit.
@Jason: MGK was pointing out that the view in question states that another person like Musharraf would be all that it takes to consolidate a Caliphate in the region.
While its nice to know there are large groups of secularists within a predominately Muslim region of the world, I find it naive at best for people who holds any religion (esp. monotheisms) as a philosophical priority to try and sell the notion that it can be construed as anti-terrorism. Anyway you slice it, religion is inherently irrational because it is based on the real world applications of purely conjectural faith (e.g. I have a soul and/or I have a god who wants to dry hump that soul) which, in turn and ultimately, can not be supported or validated with anything more substantial than “because I want to believe it.” Also, monotheisms pride themselves on having one, true path which ultimately leads to the implication, if not the direct belief, that all other philosophical paths (other monotheisms especially) are, at best, incorrect, or at the worst, pure objective evil.
The other factor is that as long as someone can hold a thought in their head, rational or irrational, and finds it easier to pick up a rock to beat an philosophical opponent instead of actually being able to defend or promote their ideas, then there will always be a potential for terrorism – or if they win the fight, patriotism.
This is why I tend to like those people who are into new age religions. While they are still irrational, these faiths do more to help define who a person is rather than who that person needs to be and how they need to interact with others. Plus with the benefit of polytheism, which promotes a culture that inherently accepts the notion that there are multiple, and even diverging, religious faiths in the world, there is a greater potential for co-existence with other conjectural, religious faiths and a greater chance for secular understanding.