Muslims Killing Muslims

If there is a component of the congeries called Islam which merits the oft-voiced description of "the religion of peace and tolerance," it is that branch called Sufism. The Sufi understanding of Islam arose in the Arabian Peninsula and was carried widely by wandering mystics.

The Sufi emphasis on equality was made to order for societies in which caste systems prevailed. As a consequence it is not surprising that Sufism took firm root in the Indian subcontinent. Following the Partition, the majority of Sufis like the majority of Muslims, removed themselves to Pakistan where Sufis had long been present. Lahore became a major Sufi Muslim center nearly a thousand years ago. To this day it has been the site of Pakistan's most important Sufi shrine.

The Data Ganj Baksh, to use the correct name for the shrine, became the target of Taliban in the latest of a long line of attacks not only on Sufi shrines but the mosques and members of other, "minority" groups within Islam. In its ideology, Taliban of Pakistan, like its assorted spiritual ancestors, has drunk long and deep at the twin wells of Salifism and Wahhibism.

The world view of these austere versions of Sunni Islam hold that the "minority" groups including Shias and Sufis are either apostates or something indistinguishable from such traducers and backsliders. Sufis had constituted a large, perhaps even a majority, of the Muslims of Pakistan prior to the campaign mounted by the dictator Zia ul-Haq, who promoted the Wahhibist form of Islam above all others as a means of regime consolidation and maintenance. The US government during the years of Zia were, of course, clueless as to the existence of different and to some extent competing forms of Islam. The folks of the Reagan administration in particular were totally uninterested in just what implications for the future of Pakistan resided in the push to Wahhibism conducted by Zia.

Pushed by Zia and fueled by Saudi petrodollars, the puritanical, austere, not to say, extremist view of Islam took firm root in the hundreds of madrassas strewn by the generous Saudis across Pakistan. These religious schools produced not only the Taliban of Afghanistan but also the groups which have become the Taliban of Pakistan.

The Koran-waving killers of Taliban in its Pakistani incarnation have established an unquestioned dominance in Punjab state, which is the heart of Pakistan as well as in the FATA and Northwest Frontier. Punjab has been the scene of numerous, previous attacks on the Sufis, most notably the March 2009 bombing of the Rahman Baba shrine. Now they have done the same with the burial place of the Sufi poet, whose name translates as "Giver of Treasures."

The two suicide bombers, whose heads have been found, killed nearly fifty Sufi worshipers and wounded more than a 175 others. The interior of the shrine was turned into an abattoir. Television reportedly carried the bloody imagery across Pakistan.

Perhaps it was the sheer butchery of the attack. Perhaps the power of the imagery. Perhaps the people of Pakistan, Sufi and otherwise, are finally getting their full of violence perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims.

There is ample precedent in recent history for the development of a backlash directed at the Killers In the Name Of Allah. In Iraq, the deadly excesses of all sectarian purveyors of terror, but the al-Qaeda in particular, ultimately triggered a severe push back from the people caught in the whirlwind. Among the results were the Awakening Councils and the Sons of Iraq, both key elements in the establishment of an approximation of order in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, following the initiation of the McChrystal doctrine of "courageous restraint," the bloody work of the Taliban Slaughterers In the Name of the Prophet, ultimately has resulted in local villagers turning out with "their personal assault weapons" (to quote the Armed Services Press Service term) to aid ISAF/US/Afghan National Forces winkle out and kill the Thugs of the One True Faith. Even Afghan Sunnis, who have exhibited a very low tolerance to the notion of foreign "infidels" killing Afghan Muslims, showed their limits with being murdered by co-religionists.

The same dynamic has been seen more than a few times in recent months in the FATA. Not only have the locals applauded (pace, the US MSM) the use of Predators and Reapers, they have joined with Pakistani security forces in abating permanently the Taliban nuisance.

Taliban's barbaric excess at the Data Ganj Bakshi shrine may have marked a tipping point in Lahore, perhaps even Punjab generally. A several thousand person demonstration demanded that the government take effective action against the Malefactors of Great Faith. It is, admittedly, a very small straw in the mass of conflicting winds which is Pakistani politics today, but it is a straw nonetheless.

Zia ul-Huq was terribly ill-advised in his fervent welcoming of Saudi money and the Wahhibism it supported, fostered, and grew. The US was equally out-to-lunch with its willful ignorance of the implications for Pakistan and the region.

The time may be upon us to press the Pakistani government to return to the nation's Islamic roots and work to reinvigorate the Sufis in their midst. This would promote the interests of Pakistan in stability. It would also promote the interests of the civilized world as Sufis are inclined toward mysticism and equality (including gender) rather than seeking to kill their way to the myth of a global caliphate.