The fight against the Taliban on ideological battlegrounds poses a grave challenge, writes Dawn.com’s Huma Yusuf.
Why fight when the infidels are paying huge amounts of jiziya with willing submission?  Some Muslims, those who do well under the current arrangement, don’t like the advances of the Taliban: in“the struggle over the soul of Islam”  the people of Pakistan – will have to jointly engage in ijtehad to devise a way to quash Taliban ideology, say’s Huma Yusuf, a “moderate” cleric.
* Unfortunately for Huma, the gates of Itjihad are closed.
* Reform of Islam, a concept of which many Westerners are terribly fond,  is out:  “No-one can change Islam. No-one can call himself a reformer of Islam. Islam cannot be reformed. Islam is perfect, from beginning to end.  Modernizing Islam, that cannot be done.” Source>>
                             Huma in Pakistan, 26 responses
Scan newspapers and blogs in recent months and you’ll see that the fight against the Taliban in north-west Pakistan has been framed as a ‘war against terror’ or an ‘information war’ over the ‘hearts and minds’ of residents of the Frontier province. Op-eds have argued that the Pakistan Army is fighting the Taliban to restore territorial integrity, safeguard human rights, ensure good governance and establish the writ of the Pakistani state. Books and articles point out that Taliban foot soldiers are young men, lured to militancy by hefty cash dole-outs in the absence of other job opportunities. Indeed, one aspect of the fight against the Taliban has almost been forgotten in recent months – its ideological underpinnings.
The suicide bombing at the Jamia Naeemia mosque in Lahore on Friday, in which the head cleric Dr Sarfraz Naeemi lost his life, is an urgent reminder that the fight against the Taliban is nothing less than a battle for the future of Islam and how the religion is to be practiced and interpreted in Pakistan.
                 Last weeks suicide bombing bought down a major hotel…
Events in recent months – such as the fiasco of the passage of the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation and increased focus on the Taliban’s funding sources – have made many Pakistanis cynical about their motives. In some quarters, the militants are viewed as money- and power-hungry warlords, hell-bent on claiming territory and control (and revelling in the wealth that Swat’s emerald mines have to offer). But Friday’s blast confirms that Pakistan’s militants are primarily on a broad ideological mission to impose, consolidate and spread their preferred interpretation of Islam.
Continue reading Paki Government Trying to Reinterpret Islam