A strange call to martyrdom
Who knew that the latest dust-up at the Red Mosque in Islamabad was all about defending to the death the right to kidnap Chinese prostitutes? AP, via WSJ:
“We will not surrender. We will be martyred, but we will not surrender,” Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque’s senior cleric, told GEO television, a private channel. “We are more determined now.”…
Troops surrounded the mosque on Wednesday, a day after tensions between government security forces and mosque followers who have sought to impose Taliban-style rule in the city erupted into deadly street clashes. The violence has killed 19 people. Militant students had streamed out of the mosque Tuesday to confront security forces sent there after the kidnapping of six alleged Chinese prostitutes…
The violence brought to a head a six-month standoff between Pakistan’s U.S.-backed government and its top cleric, Maulana Abdul Aziz, who challenged Gen. Musharraf with an anti-vice campaign that has included kidnapping alleged prostitutes and police officers. Mr. Aziz, who is Mr. Ghazi’s brother, was caught Wednesday as he tried to escape the complex disguised in a burqa and women’s high-heeled shoes.
(We’ve previously noticed Mr. Maulana Abdul Aziz. Delightful chap.) It is axiomatic that the approach to life, “Live and Let Live”, so common in America and the West, cannot abide peacefully side by side with the injunction to “Command Good and Forbid Evil.” Alas, so many people simply want to avert their gaze.
July 9th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Why does the AP refer to Pakistan’s government as “U.S. backed”? I keep seeing it everytime there is an article on Pakistan, and it drives me nuts. In what way is the U.S. responsible for the government of Pakistan? This looks to me like an attempt by the AP to cover the U.S. in not only its own problems and garbage, but in everyone else’s as well. In AP world, every lousy, unsolvable problem is caused by and belongs to the U.S., but at the same time, the U.S. is in violation of “international law” whenever it acts to solve something.
I guess I’m supposed to infer that if the U.S. was not “backing” the government of Pakistan, this hostage situation would not have occured and everyone in Pakistan would be happy. George Bush, get out of Pakistan!