Word: islamabad
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...locus of local anger against Musharraf is the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in the capital Islamabad. For months the clerics of the mosque and the students of its two madrasahs, or seminaries, have openly defied the authorities: they have occupied a nearby children's library to protest government plans to raze illegal mosques built on state-owned land; set up their own Shari'a court; and have even kidnapped policemen and terrorized neighboring areas with a Taliban-like vigilante campaign against anything they consider un-Islamic. On July 3, that defiance erupted into a bloody clash between security forces...
...frightened," she says. "One day all lives will end, [so] why not give [our lives] to Islam?" Amma Adeem, a 20-year-old student in the same class, says she is willing to sell her life for paradise. "This is the house of Allah," she says, meaning the madrasah, Islamabad, Pakistan and the world. "We must live by his laws. We don't do this for ourselves-we do it for Islam...
Pakistan's very future seems to be on the line at Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque), in the capital city of Islamabad. For months students and teachers at the mosque's madrasahs, or seminaries, have been taking the law into their own hands, launching vigilante raids on video and music shops for promoting "un-Islamic behavior." Twice they abducted women--including six Chinese masseuses--for alleged prostitution...
...blackouts common. Extremist groups have gained power-last week an Islamic court in the tribal areas sentenced and executed four people for adultery. Towns in the northern provinces bordering Afghanistan are run by a Pakistani Taliban that has shut down barbershops, girls' schools and polio-vaccination programs. In Islamabad, students from the fundamentalist Jamia Hafsa seminary have occupied a children's library less than a mile from the Parliament building. Abdul Aziz, head of the Lal Masjid mosque where Jamia Hafsa is located, preaches against the government, calling for its overthrow if Islamic law is not implemented and claiming that...
...quell unrest, Musharraf's best move could simply be to reinstate Chaudhry. "Then he wouldn't be the 100-foot giant stalking the cities and roads of Pakistan," says Aitzaz Ahsan, Chaudhry's lead counsel. But many consider it unlikely that the President will back down. Islamabad these days is permeated by fear that martial law will be declared. "My worry is that [Musharraf] is about to do something really silly and really dangerous," says Gilani. Musharraf "has now developed a larger-than-life self-image," adds Iqbal. "He thinks that he is Pakistan's destiny." Certainly he was once...