Battered Pakistan Turns to Clerics, Asia Times Online, 8 December 2009
EXCERPT: "Following the killings in Rawalpindi of top retired and serving military officials and their children during Friday prayers, Pakistan has scrambled to redefine its anti-terror approach. This has included input from the Muslim religious elite and reflects a major shift in national policy, which until now has been obsessed with destroying militants who use Pakistan as their base for international terrorism, while distancing itself from the concept of Washington's AfPak policy, which views Pakistan and Afghanistan as a single war theater. On Sunday, Interior Minister Rehman Malik met one of the most influential clerics in the country, the Grand Mufti, Mufti Rafi Usmani, in the southern port city of Karachi. He comes from the largest seminary belonging to the Deobandi school of thought, which is also practiced by the Taliban. Other key people involved include Qazi Hussain Ahmed, an influential figure in international Islamic movements who had close ties during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan the 1980s to people who are now al-Qaeda leaders. Also prominent is Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the chief of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, a coalition partner in the federal cabinet and the largest political party of Muslim clerics. The party had close ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan during the late 1990s. An anti-terror policy being considered is the one adopted by Saudi Arabia when an al-Qaeda-led insurgency was at its height after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saudi scholars were urged to spread the word that if Muslims in Iraq carried out a resistance struggle in their own country, it was their right to do so. But if anyone tried to destabilize Saudi Arabia, under any pretext, it would be considered as treason and dealt with with iron hands. Also, along with military and law-enforcement measures, the kingdom adopted a tactic of 'counter-radicalization', using religious figures to directly spread the word that al-Qaeda was an apostate group."
Read the full story.
Related articles:
Mufti Muneeb terms terrorist acts "haraam", DAWN, 8 December 2009
Ulema term suicide bombing un-Islamic, The News International, 8 December 2009
In Pakistan, anguish and questions: Residents, officials decry assault in garrison city, The Washington Post, 6 December 2009
Suicide bomber kills anti-Taliban cleric Allama Naeemi, DAWN, 13 June 2009
Religious scholars declare suicide attacks in Pakistan un-Islamic, The Earth Times, 15 October 2008
Could counter-radicalization work in Pakistan? [blog], The Washington Independent, 10 October 2008
Related reports and academic articles:
Pakistan jihad: The making of religious terrorism [pdf], Islamabad Policy Research Institute // IPRI Journal, Summer 2009
Assessing de-radicalization in the Arab world, Carnegie Middle East Center, 21 January 2009
Beyond terrorism: De-radicalization and disengagement from violent extremism, International Peace Institute, 11 October 2008
Ideology: Clergy holds war on terror responsible for terrorism, Pak Institute for Peace Studies, 11 February 2008
