The movement known as pasmanda tehreek (movement) is not coming with (any new divisions like those along) caste. In fact, the division was created and is maintained by the elite Muslim castes as it is in their interest. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, an upper caste, who also got entitled as Khan Bahadur by British Government, can be seen backing the inequality of the caste system. Many scholars ( vidwaan ) and priests ( mulla ) remain instrumental in this hierarchical construction. We are highlighting the issue, invoking the same category of caste, which was earlier maintained to sustain inequality, to demand justice ( haq ). -- Mohd. Noor Hasan Azad & Khalid Anis Ansari

In a tiny room in East Delhi’s Patparganj, a man spends most of his waking hours at his computer. This passion may be something he shares with millions, but Sultan Shahin is no ordinary web addict. Behind his constant surfing, writing and posting pieces on his website called newageislam.com is a steadfast purpose: to reclaim Islam from the clutches of jihadists and petrodollar-funded Salafist-Wahhabis.

Shahin, who ideologically fights the religious right — the tyrannical Taliban and its sympathisers as well as the many Islamic supremacists who claim that Islam alone is Allah’s chosen path to paradise — is a spirited web warrior. “My fight is against petrodollar Islam,” he declares. “I am creating a forum that will lead us to the understanding of a pluralistic, inclusive, tolerant Islam.” And Islam, he adds, is not a new religion. “The Quran says this. It is a reiteration and revalidation of earlier religions,” he avers, seated at his study stacked with scholarly tomes, including several copies of the commentaries on the Quran.

Anathema as this may be to fundamentalists, it’s won Shahin many followers. In the mere two years since the inception of newageislam.com, the website has 117,000 registered subscribers (subscription is free), claims its 60-year-old editor. Its daily newsletter, brought out by a skeletal staff of five, has carried debates on issues and personalities seldom talked about among mosque-going, visibly pious Muslims. So the Mumbai-based Muslim televangelist Dr Zakir Naik is slammed, not because he is allegedly funded by the petro-rich Saudi Sheikhs, but because he tries to establish the supremacy of Islam over all other religions. Niyaz Fatehpuri, a 20th-century Indian scholar and editor of Urdu periodical Nigaar, has become a much admired man on the website because of his rational, ingenious interpretation of Islamic principles. The website even follows the Urdu press, including Urdu dailies in Pakistan, and uploads the rational views in it, both in their original Urdu and English translations. ...

Shahin later landed up in London as an editor of Asia Times, a weekly owned by one Arif Ali of Indian origin. A decade or so in England, he says, gave him great experience “as it exposed me to different strains of Islam and Muslims”. Like, once at a friend’s house in Nottingham, he heard a 20-year-old Muslim extolling the virtues of Ahle Hadees, a sect which propagates puritanical Islam. Shahin asked the boy the treatment he would prescribe for those Muslims who didn’t follow the Ahle Hadees sect. “Kill them,” said the young fanatic in a cold-blooded tone. “It really disturbed me. The boy had apparently been influenced by radical organisations like Al Muhajiroon and Hizb-ut-Tehrir. Thousands of young Muslims had been brainwashed by incendiary preacher Omar Bakri who commanded the following that saints do,” recalls Shahin. “I knew it would not take long before the fires of fanatic Islam reached the Indian subcontinent and consumed our youth.” -- Mohammad Wajihuddin, The Times of India, Mumbai

Despite unqualified support from and immense help from the tribal elders, Islamabad had demonstrated little concern for the safety, and for the development of the tribal regions. The populations of FATA and KP continue to suffer under sweeping and indiscriminate military operations, largely executed through haphazard bombing and artillery attacks on populated areas, which has forced vast numbers to become refugees in their own country, languishing in different Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), by June 15, 2010, there were more than 3.3 million conflict IDPs in Pakistan, since the start of the fight between Pakistan’s Armed Forces and militant groups in 2008. -- Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

We Muslims know the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation. It's an act of "fitna"(mischief).

The Koran commands Muslims to, "Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book" -- i.e., Jews and Christians. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of "fitna". So what gives Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the "Cordoba Initiative" and his cohorts the misplaced idea that they will increase tolerance for Muslims by brazenly displaying their own intolerance in this case?

Do they not understand that building a mosque at Ground Zero is equivalent to permitting a Serbian Orthodox church near the killing fields of Srebrenica where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered? There are many questions that we would like to ask. Questions about where the funding is coming from? If this mosque is being funded by Saudi sources, then it is an even bigger slap in the face of Americans, as nine of the jihadis in the Twin Tower calamity were Saudis. -- Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah

What was surprising in the Sirin Middya case was the silence of the university authorities. The Aliah University website states: “It is hoped that along with the people of any race, creed, caste or class, this university will play a crucial and leading role in the advancement of higher education”. The vision statement mentions that the university would like to instill a dynamism so that the students “can successfully cope with the critical needs and challenges of the present... develop love and respect for fellow citizens of the country, and integrate themselves to the nation.” Transferring Sirin Middya to another campus, away from the protesting students, was hardly a reflection of this spirit. It took the West Bengal minority affairs minister’s intervention to let her resume classes. Rayana Kazi is still struggling to exercise her choice and has had to seek protection from the high court against a harrassment which is now over an year long. – By Azra Razzack

These shrines are a memorial to the hybridity of the land, if not the state, of Pakistan. Until Partition, before the exodus of Pakistan’s Hindu and Sikh populations, they were places (as they still are in India) where Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims worshipped together. Behind each one—formed out of more than six centuries of religious reform, which created humanistic, more tolerant hybrids of India’s religions—would be some tale built around a local saint that celebrated the plurality of the land. To adhere to the spirit of these shrines was to know that deeper than any doctrinal difference was a shared humanity; it was almost to feel part of a common religion; the spread of this shared culture through Punjab, Sindh and Kashmir constituted an immense human achievement. And for as long as the plurality remained, the religion remained, seemingly immune to fanaticism, incapable of being reduced to bigotry and prejudice. But once the land of Pakistan, after Partition, was drained of its diversity (and this constituted no less a shock than if London or New York were suddenly cleansed of their non-white populations), the religion lost its deepest motivation, which was to bring harmony to a diverse and plural population. The amazing thing was that even after Partition, when the land of Pakistan was no longer so plural, it was this religion, full of mysticism, poetry and song, that clung on as the dominant faith of the people of Pakistan. ...

As the attacks on shrines like Data Sahib multiply, as the Americans discover that nothing will be achieved by throwing money at Pakistan, as India realizes that Pakistan’s hatred of it is not rational, that the border issue with Kashmir cannot alone be the cause of such passion, as the world begins to see that Pakistan’s problems are not administrative, Pakistanis will have to find a new narrative. The sad truth is that they are still a long way from discovering the true lesson behind the experience of the past 60 years: that it is of language, dress, notions of social organization, of shared literatures and customs, of Sufi shrines and their stories, that nations are made, not religion. That has proved to be too thin a glue and 60 years later, it has left millions of people dispossessed and full of hateful lies: a nation of human bombs. -- Aatish Taseer

However, the adherents of the Deobandi school of thought, to which the Taliban belongs, are opposed to the idea of Muslims visiting Sufi shrines and offering prayers, a practice known as piri-faqiri. The Deobandis deem piri-faqiri to be heretical, a gross violation of Islamic doctrine; ditto mystical dancing. The Deobandis, therefore, consider the Barelvis as kafir whose neck can be put to sword, no question asked. A week before July 1, the TTP had sent a letter to the Data Ganj Baksh administration threatening to attack the shrine, claiming its status was equivalent to that of the Somnath temple in Gujarat, India. The symbolism inherent in the comparison wasn’t lost—the Somnath temple had been repeatedly raided by Sultan Mehmood Ghaznavi, ‘the idol destroyer’, who believed his marauding attacks would sap the fighting spirit of the Hindus. The attack on the Data Darbar was, similarly, aimed at demoralising the Barelvis, besides striking at the root of Lahore’s religious and cultural ethos. ...

Renowned Islamic scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), which furnishes legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistan government, laments, “Labelling others infidel and kafir has become a preferred task of the mullahs. It’s clear that every sect considers others heretical, kafirs and dwellers of hell. Even verses of the Quran are wrongly used to disprove others’ faith and sects.”

In a way, a minority of Pakistan’s population has taken to declaring the rest as kafir. Look at the figures—95 per cent of the Pakistani population are Muslim, of which 85 per cent are Sunni and 15 per cent Shia. But for the five per cent belonging to the Ahle Hadith (Wahabis), the Sunnis prescribe to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. They are further subdivided into the Barelvi and Deobandi schools. Most agree on the following composition of Pakistan’s population—60 per cent Barelvis, 15 per cent Deobandis, 15 per cent Shias, 5 per cent Ahle Hadith, and the remaining 5 per cent constituting Ahmadis, Ismailis, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis, etc. This means only 20 per cent of Pakistanis (15 per cent of Deobandis plus 5 per cent of Ahle Hadith) strictly consider the remaining 80 per cent as kafir, even willing to subject them to death and destruction. -- Amir Mir

Pakistan should take a leaf out of its old wing, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), where its Supreme Court has struck down the bulk of the controversial 5th Amendment by reinstating a ban on Islamic political parties. Bangladesh’s original constitution was secular in nature but following a coup in 1975, the constitution was amended and given a religious tinge. Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that she was “not in favour of banning any political party”. This may have more to do with the fact that the Jamaat-e-Islami is a large political party with some clout. Earlier, the Bangladesh High Court had outlawed punishments handed down in fatwas (religious edicts), after a series of cases of Muslim women being beaten and caned. Not only that, the Bangladesh government has also banned books by Maulana Maududi because they “encourage terrorism and militancy”. It is time that Pakistan follows in the footsteps of Bangladesh, also a Muslim country but which is paving a path towards the traditions laid down by its founding fathers. Mr Jinnah had also visualised a secular Pakistan but this was not to be. -- Editorial in Daily Times, Lahore, August 2, 2010

This week saw Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan take over as “PM” of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The area, which Pakistan calls Azad Jammu and Kashmir or AJK, has since its 2006 elections been in a state of political crisis.

Dawn reported on July 26: “Just 30 hours before the vote on a no-confidence motion against PM Raja Farooq Haider, a faction of the ruling Muslim Conference which moved the motion claimed that 18 of 24 cabinet members had resigned... the AJK Assembly speaker, who is supporting the PM, said he hadn’t received any resignation... He called a session of the assembly for a vote. It will be the third time the assembly will vote on a no-confidence motion since its election in 2006... Former PM Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, who had been voted out in January last year, has been nominated again as the Leader of the House. A spokesman for Sardar Attique, who is spearheading the move against the PM (of his own party), claimed to have the support required...” The incumbent “PM” tendered his resignation on July 27. According to Daily Times, he accused the federal government of “conspiring against him.” The ISI is a guiding force behind this move, suggests a report in The News: “Haider, while talking to this correspondent... admitted to having met General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, DG ISI but said people had created an impression he was an anti-state person and he met Pasha to clarify his position. ‘I convinced the general and at the end of the meeting, Pasha said that after listening to your views I have found you a patriotic person,’ the AJK PM said.” -- Ruchika Talwar

It goes without saying that there exists not even a single Barelvi terrorist organisation in Pakistan. And yet, another complication of this is the potent mixture of Pashtun nationalism with Deobandi Islam. Mix Pashtun nationalism with Deobandi Islam and you get Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the most important terrorist leader from North Waziristan. Hafiz Gul Bahadur is the direct descendant of Faqir of Ipi, whose claim to fame was that he raised the banner of violent jihad against the newly formed dominion of Pakistan. Thus, Pakistan has faced a war against militant Islam since the first day it was created. The world discovered the Taliban a decade ago but Pakistan has been forced to reckon with them since its inception. And they were called the Taliban even in the time of Lord Curzon where a religious fanatic, Mullah Pawinda, had challenged British rule. -- Yasser Latif Hamdani

"During my frequent visits to Pakistan in the 1990s, all kinds of theories were expressed whenever there was an attack on members of the Shia or Sunni community," the German journalist Hans Bremer wrote in The News (Feb 26, 2003). "One that always struck me as strange was that a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia was being fought on the streets of Pakistani cities.''. -- Adnan Farooq

The Punjab government has sidestepped the longer term core issue of terrorism by shifting the debate to the threat to democracy from within. This is in line with the PPP view in Islamabad that the judges and generals are a bigger threat to its government than terrorism.

In the next two months or so, we can be reasonably sure that there will be more acts of terrorism as well as more disqualifications from parliament. Meanwhile, the judges of the Supreme Court, who are in a very aggressive mode, may undo elements of the 18th amendment that enable a degree of parliamentary oversight of judicial appointments and also try to unseat President Zardari on one count or another. The stage is therefore set for more confusion, confrontation and instability. -- Najam Sethi

Deplorable and ugly as the violence has been from certain Baloch quarters, the real introspection required is on the part of the Pakistani state — introspection that is hinted at occasionally but never actually delivered on. While the terrible days of violent suppression by the security forces in the Musharraf era may be over, there is a sense that the Pakistan Army continues to view the Baloch problem with uncompromising eyes. Proof of that is the continuing problem of ‘missing persons’. While Baloch leaders claim many thousand people are missing, independent observers suggest a figure between one and two thousand-- A Dawn Editorial

According to political analyst Hasan Askari, the militants have polished their approach, expanded their arsenal and improved their tactics. They also seem to be targeting the Army as well as the police — their original targets. The federal Government says that Punjabi groups have been responsible for most of the daring strikes in the province, but authorities in Lahore continue to deny their existence. The provincial Law Minister insists that he did nothing wrong to canvass for votes in the company of some of these militant leaders. While the Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and other foreign fighters who have found refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas have no option but to fight the Pakistani Army, the Punjabis have the option to return to their own province and stage more attacks. -- Sankar Sen

Political Commentator Rafia Zakaria in an article published in Dawn on February 10, 2010, observed: “As Pakistan’s only mega city Karachi’s demographics, history of communal conflict and dynamics of urban governance all present a lethal mix. In addition, its status as a global city, one with widespread (and largely unregulated) communication systems, present unique opportunities to terrorist groups wishing to use the city as a hub for monitoring and proliferating transnational networks. More al Qaeda planners and leaders are believed to have been apprehended in Karachi than in any other single city, pointing to the fact that Karachi is not simply a target for terrorist attacks but a place which provides a cover to groups planning them.”…

Karachi now provides an entire ‘infrastructure’ for terrorist organisations to flourish. The TTP, Taliban and al Qaeda, facing some pressure in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, continue to pour into the port city, further damaging an already dwindling Pakistani economy. The city is already a safe haven for Islamist terrorists, and is evolving as a significant theatre of violence. Unless extremist networks are uprooted now, the ‘descent into anarchy’ that has been noted across Pakistan’s other provinces may well come to afflict the country’s commercial capital. -- Ajit Kumar Singh and Tushar Ranjan Moahnty