Word: fazlullah
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...pirate radio station a few hours later, vowing to continue his fight for an Islamic state. In Swat, once a tourist haven 100 miles (160 km) from the national capital Islamabad, militants burned down the country's only ski resort and torched 21 girls' schools. A spokesman for Mullah Fazlullah, the local Taliban leader who used to work the resort's chairlift, said their group was forced to act because government security forces were using some of the schools as bunkers. In the forbidding tribal zone of Waziristan, followers of Baitullah Mehsud, the physical-education teacher turned assassin (both...
...Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban and the man accused of assassinating former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has embraced the cause of the Red Mosque and refers to it often in his public condemnations of Musharraf's government. Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of a militant group that took over the once popular tourist destination of Swat valley has sworn to avenge the death of those lost in the raid...
...clear in the election, they vote for the mainstream political parties that espouse moderate agendas. Many follow a peaceful, tolerant version of Sufism. Most of the country's educated élite wants to keep religion in the mosque and out of government. Yet when firebrand clerics such as Mullah Fazlullah, a militant leader who spews antigovernment diatribes from his pirate radio station, calls for jihad, threatens girls who go to school and boasts squadrons of suicide bombers ready to detonate explosives, the moderate mullahs stay silent. Virtually unhindered, al-Qaeda has regrouped in the ungoverned tribal areas along Pakistan...
...where his ham-fisted attempts to stay in power have earned him widespread opprobrium, it was perceived to be a cynical, and successful, bid for support from the West at the expense of his own people. "There has been a failure in our Islamic obligation to condemn people like Fazlullah and Mehsud," admits Al-Ghazali, the imam of Islamabad's Faisel Mosque. "But you know the man who is championing this anti-extremism cause is a very unpopular man. Musharraf is identified with this cause so much, that if they initiate a move against this extremism, they are perceived...
...Terrorism, indeed, is proving to be an effective means to advance the religious cause. In Swat, a picturesque valley that has been besieged by Fazlullah's militant forces, the government has proposed the implementation of Shari'a. Bhutto's husband and de facto successor, Asif Ali Zardari, says he will eschew the military option in favor of dialogue with militants in the restive tribal areas along the border. That approach could work, but it requires the Pakistani people to take a firm position on who takes control of their religion. The extremists have already shown that they are willing...