Word: pakistani
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...wanted to die for her God. She was sitting on a pile of sandbags, pressing wet rags to her eyes in an attempt to ease the effects of the clouds of tear gas billowing through her madrasah. Outside, gunfire echoed through the deserted streets of Islamabad as the Pakistani military battled militants holed up in the mosque next door. Aman, just 22, had wanted to fight alongside her brothers, as she called them, in defense of the Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa madrasah complex that had been the conservative heartbeat of Pakistan's capital for decades. Draped in a black...
...days later, her prayers were answered, according to the school's headmistress. Aman, together with some 70 other students and militants, died as the weeklong siege of the mosque and madrasah complex culminated in a final showdown lasting 36 hours. Few Pakistanis had supported the mosque-led vigilante campaign that kidnapped alleged brothel workers, threatened video and music shops selling "un-Islamic" material and declared a fatwa against the popular woman tourism minister who had been photographed hugging her parachute instructor. Still, the government's attack on the madrasah last July was widely condemned. The popularity of President Pervez Musharraf...
...large, common Pakistanis see no need to do so. As was made 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...
...Shari'a Dilemma Once unleashed, it is nearly impossible to put the genie of militant Islam back in the bottle. Even Pakistan's moderate Muslims are caught in the middle. Islam has never been decoupled from Shari'a, and though few Pakistanis see the Taliban period in neighboring Afghanistan, in which women were stoned for adultery and thieves faced the amputation of hands, as the ideal Islamic state, they feel conflicted about throwing it out entirely. "Hardly any Muslim will say, No, I do not want Shari'a," says Najam Sethi, a top Pakistani newspaper editor. "To say that would...
...parliament - the call for Shari'a grew louder. Pakistan's justice system - slow, corrupt and usually anything but just - had earlier commenced a quiet renaissance. But a new court was installed, stacked with judges who signed an oath of loyalty to Musharraf. The court has little credibility with the Pakistani public, who see the whole episode as yet another confirmation of a corrupt justice system, where those in power make the rules. Shari'a, whose supreme authority is God, not a President, is increasingly seen as a solution to Pakistan's problems. In a recent survey, 60% of Pakistanis said...