Word: wahabis
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Since the 1980s, Pakistan's Shi'ite community has been subjected to brutal attacks from extremist Wahabi-inspired militant groups that regard them as heretics or apostates. With the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban, that threat has intensified. In recent years, the town of Parachinar in the wild tribal areas along the Afghan border, Baluchistan province's capital of Quetta, Dera Ismail Khan in the northwest, and parts of Punjab have been among the areas scarred by anti-Shi'ite attacks. The latest bombing will call attention to the Taliban's long-standing but murky presence in Karachi. Until this...
...government also views Iranian influence as a potential foil to that of Saudi Arabia, which has stronger ties with the opposition. Government officials privately accuse the Saudis of being prejudiced toward Zardari because of his Shi'ite background. (Shi'ites are an embattled minority in Saudi Arabia, whose dominant Wahabi strand of Islam deems them heretics.) But Pakistan's response to Iran will ultimately be determined by the all-powerful military establishment. And, analysts say, the army is a great deal more wary of Iran's regional aspirations. "They are not really allies," says Christine Fair of the RAND Corp...
...attain a privileged position in the country. Portraying India as the permanent enemy justified the allocation of a huge percentage of national GDP for defence. The army, particularly during the period of General Zia ul-Haq, also engaged in systematic Islamization of the state by bringing in the Wahabi concept of Islam from Saudi Arabia and discarding the more gentle type of Islam as it had grown up and was practiced in the Indian subcontinent. It was, among other things, a determined effort to cut the historical links with India and to project Pakistan as a part of the larger...
...Union invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. cooperated with Saudi Arabia in recruiting and arming hundreds of Sunni Muslim radicals to wage jihad. One unintended consequence of that program, of course, is the international jihadist brigade known today as al-Qaeda. But the operating assumption at the time was that the Wahabi brand of Sunni radicalism was innately conservative and therefore a natural ally of the U.S. against both the godless communists and the radical Shiites. (Ironically, it was the same hostility to the Mullahs in Tehran that led the Reagan administration to send an emissary to Baghdad - a certain Mr. Rumsfeld...
...Michael Doran, writing in the Washington Post, argues that the recent "Zarqawi letter" proposing a campaign of terror against Iraqi Shiites, "even if it is a forgery, faithfully expresses al-Qaeda's attitude toward sectarianism." This, he deduces from the implacable hatred of Shiism at the heart of the Wahabi religious tradition in Saudi Arabia and its acolytes elsewhere, and in this article - and in a lengthier exposition in Foreign Affairs - he explains how the ousting of Saddam Hussein has made attacking the Shiites a more pressing priority for a segment of the Wahabi clergy in Saudi Arabia...