02/02/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09682

MILITANT ISLAM EXPLOITS POOR

It is now increasingly clear that extremists have used Islam to exploit the poor. In Pakistan, many villagers of modest means answered the call of radical mullahs to join the Taleban and become martyrs in the so-called "holy war" in Afghanistan. Thousands of young Pakistanis went to Afghanistan only to be abandoned and betrayed by those who recruited them.

One such volunteer was twenty-eight-year-old Ata ur-Rahman [ah-tah oor-rakh-mahn]. Today, three months after going to Afghanistan, he is languishing in a jail there, while his family regrets that he ever went to fight with the Taleban in the first place. As Mr. ur-Rahman’s brother put it, Ata "was betrayed by the mullahs who took him." The Rahman family is not alone in its disillusionment with radical religious leaders who urged Pakistanis to support the Taleban.

The Taleban’s crushing defeat and the Taleban’s abandonment of its Pakistani followers have dealt a blow to extremists in Pakistan. They have reportedly lost much of their public support. As Shireen Mazari [sheer-REEN mah-ZAH-ree], head of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad, said, "The Taleban lost their credibility when they didn’t stand and die for their cause. They just fled and left the foreigners there to die. People [in Pakistan] who lost youngsters in Afghanistan feel misled."

Young men in Pakistani villages are now far less willing to listen to men like Sufi [SOO-fee] Mohammad, a sectarian party leader who rounded up volunteers to go to Afghanistan. As one observer said, "Sufi Mohammad let down the people. He took all these guys and now they are dead or in prison. But he ran away and came back [to Pakistan]. People are asking why he didn’t sacrifice himself."

In spite of the thousands who joined the Taleban, the Islamic radicals are the minority in Pakistan. Clearly, the majority of Pakistanis do not want to follow the path of the Taleban, which led to international isolation and war. To guard against the threat of extremism and terrorism, the government of President Pervez Musharraf is cracking down on radical mullahs and religious schools. He enjoys growing support in this campaign.

And there is good reason to think that Muslims around the world will join Pakistanis in rejecting radical religious teachings and embrace a tolerant and peaceful Islam.