"Islamists in Pakistan have flourished in part because governments have failed to provide for people’s needs, such as in education and health care. Islamists fill the gap through their welfare organizations, clinics, mosques, religious seminaries, and other networks. The impoverished masses then support their philosophies and political activities."
Wouldn't you support those taking care of you?
Isn't that what governments are SUPPOSED to do?
That's not it either, according to my Zionist War Daily.
"Despite tensions, Pakistani Christians ‘stand tall’ on holiday" by Shaiq Hussain, Washington Post / December 26, 2010
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Waris Masih spends his workdays sweeping and cleaning wide, tree-shaded streets, a job shared by many of the Christians who live in this serene capital city. The other afternoon, he turned his focus toward beautifying one of the trees in his own neighborhood — using lights, baubles, and garland.
Related: Pakistanis Celebrate Christmas
Jesus And Mary In Muslim Eyes: Respect And Love
And we return the same when it comes to Islam and Mohammed.
Also see: Pitting Pakistan's Christians Against Its Muslims
And just who would want to do that?
Aided by a throng of enthusiastic youths, Masih, 50, was spreading the Christmas spirit inside one of Islamabad’s Christian colonies, crowded shantytowns that stand in stark contrast to the city’s manicured lawns and stately villas. Nearby, others were constructing a wooden Nativity scene.
Asked whether they were afraid, they offered resounding nos.
Why should they be? They have been living there for centuries with no problem.
It was, perhaps, a surprising answer in Muslim-majority Pakistan at the end of 2010, a year when animosity toward religious minorities appeared to escalate. Islamist insurgents killed hundreds in bombings on mosques belonging to minority Muslim sects such as Ahmadis and Sufis.
Related: Quick Prayer at the Pakistani Mosque
Certain people shouldn't be let in if you know what I mean.
Less than 5 percent of Pakistanis are Christians, and tensions rose further last month after a court sentenced a Christian woman to death for blasphemy, triggering debate over laws that critics say promote religious intolerance.
Instead of cowering, however, several Christians in Islamabad sought to make their Christmas celebrations as public as ever, and maybe even more so.
“There are, no doubt, problems for minorities in this country . . . but we have to live with them. This is our country,’’ Masih said. “It’s a great occasion for us.’’
The municipal government has backed them up. Last year, city workers were instructed to adorn one tree on public property. This year — the 50th anniversary of Islamabad’s founding — they decorated 12, according to Razaman Sajid, a city spokesman.
“The efforts of the Christian community stand tall and need due acknowledgment,’’ he said.
Christmas coincided with a national holiday in Pakistan, the birth date of the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Though Jinnah envisioned Pakistan as a refuge for India’s Muslim minority, he advocated that it should be a place for all faiths.
More than six decades later, however, Pakistan still struggles with the role of Islam — and of other religions — in society, and with implementing Jinnah’s ideals. In recent decades, the views of hard-line Muslim clerics have gained strength, as have shocking attacks on members of minority groups.
Authorities in cities across the country prepared for the possibility of violence on Christmas, just as they did for recent gatherings on the Shi’ite mourning date of Ashura.
Still, there were signs of the holiday on display in Islamabad. The city’s few churches were strung with lights. Some shops, particularly those catering to foreigners, offered seasonal sweets, tinsel, and cards.
This article really puts the lie to the Christian-Muslim schism.
In Masih’s neighborhood, residents said the religious tensions that marked the year were set aside for at least a few days.
Naveed Maseeh, 16, listed all the ways he was marking the holiday: baking cakes, exchanging cards, and helping erect a small manger outside his church, to house the scene marking Jesus’ birth.
“I love this barn, and every year I wait anxiously for this time to make and decorate it,’’ Maseeh said. “We are not afraid.’’
Someone is trying to make you that way (as in Iraq).
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And thus it gives me great sadness to report these other items:
"Blasphemy trials reveal cracks in Pakistan’s justice system; Law aids radicals, rewards vendettas, opponents say" by Karin Brulliard, Washington Post / December 25, 2010
KULLUWAL, Pakistan — With its single dirt road, friendly residents and abundance of drowsing donkeys, this village hardly seems a hotbed of religious radicalism.
Nevertheless, four years ago, dozens of angry townspeople marched and chanted “Death to the blasphemer!’’ Two years later, court records show, a Muslim teenager named Muhammad Shafique was sentenced to hang for cursing the Prophet Mohammed and tossing pages of the Koran onto “cow dung and urine.’’
Today, an air of regret permeates Kulluwal. Shafique’s accusers fled town, and their relatives now say the allegations were lies. Many residents call the case a setup fueled by political and personal rivalries. But as Shafique waits on death row, his appeal stuck in Pakistan’s glacial courts, no one is quite sure what to do.
Related: Boston Globe Invisible Ink: Pakistan's Prisons
“The situation at that time was emotional. It was the responsibility of the police to sift through the facts and find the truth,’’ said Chaudhry Safraz Ahmed, 42, a community leader whose father was one of the accusers. “That did not happen. And Shafique is behind bars.’’
Police seem to be the same in Pakistan as they are in AmeriKa.
Pakistan is in the midst of a heated debate over its ban on blasphemy following the sentencing to death last month of a Christian woman, Asia Bibi. The pope condemned that sentence, which has not been carried out.
As if he had any standing to criticize anyone.
Human rights organizations, meanwhile, have demanded the repeal of a law that they said is used to harass religious and sectarian minorities in this Sunni Muslim-majority nation.
See the danger?
But blasphemy cases, about half of which involve Muslims such as Shafique, also point to a more fundamental problem with grave implications for the nation’s US-backed fight against militancy: The broken justice system, corrupt and lacking in expertise, often rewards vendettas and encourages radicalism.
Has Pakistan criticized the U.S. system?
Related: 86ing Aafia Siddiqui
If they won't I will.
In this system, religious extremism is a menacing shadow — just as it is across Pakistan, an unstable democracy where Islamist threats often eclipse the majority’s more peaceful views.
The only place it isn't is Israel with its Zionist zettlers.
The law against blasphemy — vaguely worded prohibitions on insults against Islam — gives radicals a tool to bully those who don’t share their hard-line religious views. Legal specialists said lawyers, witnesses, and authorities are frequently intimidated into helping enforce the law.
“These are the kind of provisions that allow space for extremists to act with impunity,’’ Ali Dayan Hasan, a Pakistan-based representative for Human Rights Watch, said of the blasphemy law. “This country is, in that sense, at a crossroads where it is time for people to stand up.’’
Hear that, Americans?
Just what happened on the evening of March 17, 2006, in this agrarian corner of Punjab Province remains in dispute....
Blasphemy was outlawed during British colonial rule but made a capital crime in the 1980s under the Islamist military rule of Mohammed Zia ul-Haq....
Yeah, the Pakistanis were much better under crown occupation, right.
U.S. better get in there quick, huh?
But while recent international attention has galvanized opponents of the current law, it has also roused defenders. Conservative religious parties have threatened mayhem if the law is changed, an idea they deem a Western conspiracy....
Related: Pakistan Politics
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"Pakistanis strike over purported law change " by New York Times / January 1, 2011
ISLAMABAD — A crippling strike by Islamist parties brought Pakistan to a standstill yesterday as thousands of people took to the streets and forced businesses to close to head off any change in the country’s blasphemy law, which rights groups say has been used to persecute minorities, especially Christians.
The blasphemy law was introduced in the 1980s under the military dictatorship of General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as part of a policy of promoting Islam to unite this deeply fractious society. Many attempts to revise the law have since been thwarted by the strong opposition of religious forces, which continue to gather strength.
Not an Islamist military dictatorship this time?
In fiery speeches across all major cities and towns, religious leaders warned the government against making any changes in the law....
Police fired tear gas to stop protesters....
All governments act the same.
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"Pakistanis mourn nation’s change; Fundamentalism has supplanted tolerance, dissent" by Nahal ToosI, Associated Press / January 9, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A 60-year-old university administrator in the southern port city of Karachi is wistful as he recalls the more tolerant, freewheeling Pakistan of his youth.
I feel the same nostalgia for my own nation.
Once, when a teacher suggested that no book can be perfect, the boy asked if that included Islam’s holy book, the Koran. That sparked a candid class discussion about religion. But in today’s Pakistan, Muqtida Mansoor said he would never dare to ask the question in public.
In AmeriKa you can't talk 9/11 truth.
After all, “anyone could shoot you.’’
Days after the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, one of the few politicians openly challenging the onslaught of religious extremism, Pakistani moderates are facing a new and troubling reality: Pakistan is a country where fundamentalism is becoming mainstream, leaving even less room for dissent, difference, and many once-prevalent leisures such as public music, dance parties, or other social contact between the sexes.
It's only okay if it's Israel, isn't it?
More liberal-minded Pakistanis have been left with a profound sense of loss, alienation, and fear for the future. One rights activist forecast that at the rate Islamist groups are rising, a religious party could be ruling the country in 10 to 15 years.
The transformation is particularly disheartening for many younger Pakistanis.
“There is no concept of freedom of speech in this country,’’ said Aaisha Aslam, 25, who works for a nongovernmental organization. People with fanatic mind-sets are “out to snatch this country from us.’’
At least Israel isn't driving their foreign policy.
The poles have shifted so much that it was not just bearded students from religious seminaries who last week praised the suspected killer of a politician who opposed blasphemy laws. Some religious scholars who oppose the Taliban also joined in — and lawyers showered him with rose petals.
“The silent majority does not want to take out a gun and shoot anyone, but at the same time they’re not appalled by it when somebody else does,’’ said Fasi Zaka, 34, a radio host. “The majority are enablers.’’
American have enabled mass-murdering wars and torture.
Well before Tuesday’s killing of Taseer, Pakistan’s liberals had grown increasingly cautious about speaking out for minority protections, women’s rights, and other causes. Activists who once publicly advocated repealing the blasphemy laws — which mandate death for those deemed to have insulted Islam or the Koran — are now willing to settle for mere amendments.
“We are vulnerable,’’ said Asma Jahangir, a small, hard-charging woman who is perhaps Pakistan’s best-known human rights activist. “My name has come up, and of course you have to watch as you move around, how you move around.’’
Some Pakistanis are frustrated with what they perceive as a lack of Western support for their causes. They complain of receiving little more than lip service from the United States, which is dependent on Pakistan’s aid to turn around the war in neighboring Afghanistan and eliminate Taliban and Al Qaeda hideouts on its soil.
Yeah, the war is the thing.
“We don’t matter for anybody,’’ said Marvi Sirmed, a 38-year-old activist.
Islamists in Pakistan have flourished in part because governments have failed to provide for people’s needs, such as in education and health care. Islamists fill the gap through their welfare organizations, clinics, mosques, religious seminaries, and other networks. The impoverished masses then support their philosophies and political activities.
It doesn’t help that those in Pakistan’s small, liberal, secular wing tend to be wealthier and more educated than most Pakistanis, a cultural divide that is hard to bridge, said Burzine Waghmar, who teaches about Pakistan at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
And so many liberals are increasingly nostalgic for the past, before the 1980s rule of army General Zia ul-Haq. Zia, a fundamentalist Muslim, infused Islam into everything from school textbooks to the legal code — including pushing through harsh blasphemy laws and statutes that treated rape victims as adulterers.
Yeah, it's all Zia's fault.
Didn't he die in a plane crash?
Cui bono?
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Update:
"The confessed killer of a liberal Pakistani politician provided a judge yesterday with the names of two men whose sermons allegedly sparked him to act, as YouTube footage emerged of the assassin chanting Islamic verses in police custody.
Oh, no! Just like Arizona.
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Related: A struggle for the soul of Pakistan
At least they have one; AmeriKa has lost ours.
