Religious extremism has become a grievous predicament in today's Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf's government and most of the opposition parties are talking of tolerance, justice and moderation.
The main opposition grouping, the largest right-wing alliance, MMA, having weightier voice in this context, has been reprimanding the extremists for taking the law into their own hands. But it appears that certain religious extremists do not pay any heed to any advice.
Some of them have already been attacking schools, music shops and the hairdressers mainly in the Tribal and Northern Areas and the NWFP. Reports suggest that some others of their ilk have been lately engaged in planning an "Islamic revolution" in the Federal Capital.
Most of the Western and Middle-eastern countries had supported and financed the challengers of the Godless Soviets till Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev signed the May 28, 1988, agreement in Kremlin.
Nineteen years on with no evidence of foreign finance detectable, some Mujahideen of yore still seem to be at war, though just this once they claim having gathered massive indigenous support as well. The questions, nevertheless, are: whose war are the leftover gladiators of the cold war are fighting, and more pertinently, who is footing the bill this time?
Realistically speaking, indigenous following of the so-called religious extremism does exist among our people. After all, merely naming it wild acts of zealots cannot dismiss the spirit behind massive diehard rallies and the expenses incurred over such lavish displays.
Truly, greater part of the support comes from the areas from where the Afghan war was fought two decades ago. Perhaps some of the finances might have been coming from the same impious sources that assisted the Afghan combat.
However, we should admit that the fiery and emotional rhetoric in the name of religion, and the imagery of certain recent acts of world-wide destruction somehow ascribed to the so-called warriors of Islam, have created quite a bit of frenzy among a number of common people, of all ages, across the country.
It will be mindless to blame the hot-blooded jobless youth alone, because the youngsters who can hardly buy fuel for their motorbikes cannot obviously pay for a countrywide fundamentalist parade. If this whole thing is actually being financed internally, then primarily it comes from those frustrated wealthy people who had been expecting to construct and lord it over another Mogul empire in the territories of Pakistan.
At the same time, the intellectuals who have apparently been endorsing the economic and military relationship with the West, especially the United States, all these years, also seem to have nurtured a secret rage on having been let down and frustrated in their quest for power.
Their non-performance to provide the nation a roadmap towards scientific progress and prosperous future, nonetheless, has probably induced them to seek a short-cut to their goal of supreme power. The fact that most of the madressas refuse to register with the government and have their accounts audited supports this perception.
Their's seems to be a case of misdirection. They should better divert their energies and resources towards spreading education and scientific knowledge, and creation of job opportunities for our youth, instead of pushing the nation into the dark ages of anarchy and chaos.
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