The killing machines are operating full time. The Hazara genocide continues. Pakistan’s soul is being tortured as Quetta bleeds with one attack after the other. Buses taking pilgrims to Iran were previously the targets of choice. Then it was conveniently said that providing security to transport on the road to Iran at places distant from the city was not always possible.....

The nature of the relationship of law and politics in FATA/PATA and Balochistan continues to raise pertinent questions. Is there an army/military operation in one or both areas/territories? What laws and constitutional provisions apply to them? Are fundamental rights and high court jurisdictions equally applicable or threatened in both? The answers to such questions are pivotal in determining political solutions to the crises in both regions....

Since then the killings have continued unabated. The river of blood continues to rise, day by day. People do not know how to escape it, where to go, what to do. Now even the chiefs fear they too will drown in this river. “You heard the indictment,” said the monster as he finished the story. “Now hear the sentence: you will all drown in the river of blood.”....

In their articles, the Taliban leaders and ideologues have never mentioned how many enemies they have by now killed by unleashing snakes and scorpions on them. It is ridiculous that these so-called holy warriors who live in this nuclear age do the foolish talk of using the strategy of unleashing snakes and scorpions on the powerful countries like the US, France, Britain, Pakistan and Germany. In fact, they live in a fools’ paradise....

It begins with “unanimous opinion” of scholars” that giving indirect support to jihad is synonymous with directly taking part in jihad,” connects it with a ruling from Imam Ibn-e-Taimiya and infers “Whatever applies to the fighters will also apply to the rich and resourceful civilians of a nation at war against the Muslims.” It stretches the argument further to appropriate the “innocent and weak (women, children and the old) - whom we call civilians in modern times” in this category....

Lashkar-e-Taiba is an Islamic terrorist organization that was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks as well as attacks on the Indian Armed Forces in Jammu and Kashmir. It operates primarily from Pakistan and runs terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Like other jihadi organizations, Lashkar-e-Taiba does not shrink from recruiting young children as terrorist operatives.

Two types of terrorists have laid Pakistan low. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan comprises over a dozen outfits/commanders in FATA and has killed over 30,000 civilians and 3000 military personnel since 2008. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a monolithic anti-Shia sectarian organisation headquartered in the Punjab that is lethally active in Karachi and Quetta, and has target-killed over 500 Shias in 2012. ...

In his 1,600-page opus, “The Call to Global Islamic Resistance”, released in 2005, Abu Musab al-Suri, an al-Qaeda strategist, called for Jihadi materials to be released in other tongues, including English. Over the past ten years grassroots activists who connect with each other online have published ever more on the internet in an ever greater variety of languages...

The ad buy would be the latest in what has become something of an advertising war between the AFDI and the "My Jihad" campaign, which is sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations..... The new ads will play off of the My Jihad campaign, using similar font, colour and design, to invoke a completely different interpretation of "jihad,"....

While “there are no active negotiations now” with the Taliban, General Dempsey has conceded, “there will be irreconcilable parts of the Taliban that are just so ideologically skewed that the idea of any concessions is just anathema to them”. Significantly, a number of Afghan Taliban officials and militants freed by Pakistan, purportedly to help bring peace to Afghanistan, have rejoined their colleagues in waging war against Kabul and the Western Forces....

Use of force cannot eradicate an ideology. Ideology must be countered with ideology. Secular democratic principles that appropriate wars, sanctions, forced occupation and eviction and turn a blind eye to its colossal fallout on the civilians and collateral damages provoke a volcanic eruption of shock and grief that conduces to promote this ideology among the directly affected group or their kinsmen. Only a saleable anti-terror ideology such as enshrined in the Qur’an when understood in a historical critical and holistic manner can help diffuse the Kharijite ideology that the proponent of the Fatwa is espousing under the name of Salafi Islam. As this ideology of crude retribution is preserved and propagated in ultra-conservative religious universities in many Muslim countries of the world, notably, it’s very heartland and aggressively promoted by the Saudi Government under its global propagation campaign, these agencies must stop the propagation of this anti-Qur’anic ideology while propagating the Islamic message. If they don’t do it voluntarily, they must be made to do it through scholarly/diplomatic persuasion or political leverage and other non-violent means. Violence is contagious and breeds violence. With the escalating human and material cost of violence - whether of terror or counter-terror origin, the sceptre of terror haunting the West and the peace and stability of the world at stake, a peaceful path must be explored to tackle the growing menace of Kharijite/ Salafi brand of Islam as appropriated in the preservationist, puritanical Wahabi ideology....         

The death toll from a horrific bombing that tore through a crowded vegetable market in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of south-western Pakistan climbed to 81 with many of the severely wounded dying overnight, a Pakistani police official said Sunday. Police official Fayyaz Saumbal said 164 people also were wounded by the explosion Saturday in the city of Quetta....

It becomes clear that Iqbal stressed the implementation of Islamic Shariah in Islamic countries but he wanted the Islamic government based on social democracy and not on Khilafat. In the same letter he makes his stance clear enough: “The idea of accepting social democracy in Islam in an appropriate form and according to the Shariah is nothing new or revolutionary but is like reverting to the core purity of Islam.”...

Our religious teachings should not contain any traces of violence and instead should promote more mystical and humanitarian virtues. Then we must review our laws and bring them in conformity with the morality of the 21st century world today. We should also begin discouraging communal level atrocities against any smaller community....

A conflict between the Musharraf regime and the Lal Masjid administration provided a basis for the operation which started on July 3 and lasted till July 11, 2007. The clampdown claimed lives of 103 persons, including 10 army personnel and one Ranger. Maulana Aziz, the Khateeb of Lal Masjid, who was also the principal of Jamia Faridia was arrested by the law enforcement agencies on July 4, 2007....