“Pak’s jihadi policy threatening its own existence: ICG,” From India’s 123bharath, with thanks to Skeetstreet:
[World News] Washington, A recent report published by the International Crisis Group (ICG) has said that the Pakistan government’s policy of supporting the country’s religious and fundamentalist sections of the country to counter the civilian opposition has reached such an alarming proportion that the religious extremism has started to threaten the very foundations of its existence.
The Daily Times quoted the ICG report as saying that the co-option and patronage of religious parties by successive military governments has led to the country’s Islamisation and the subsequent marginalization of the country ‘s democratic, with the result that jihadi groups and madarsaas have started flourishing like never before.
“Instead of empowering liberal, democratic voices, the government has co-opted the religious right and continues to rely on it to counter civilian opposition. By depriving democratic forces of an even playing field and continuing to ignore the need for state policies that would encourage and indeed reflect the country’s religious diversity, the government has allowed religious extremist organisations and jihadi groups, and madrasas that provide them an endless stream of recruits, to flourish,” the paper quoted the report as saying.
The report states that the Constitutional provisions to Islamise laws, education and culture and the official dissemination of a particular brand of Islamic ideology not only militate against Pakistan’s religious diversity, but also breed discrimination against the country’s non-Muslim minorities.
It states that allowing Islam to be used as a political tool not only promotes an aggressive competition for official patronage between the various Shia, Sunni factions, but also leads to a scenario with the clergy of the major sects and the sub-sects fighting among themselves to build up their political parties, raise jihadi militias, expand madrasa networks across the country.
The report states that the Musharraf administration has also like all other military governments weakened the country’s secular and democratic forces. It says that the crackdown against jihadi organizations in Pakistan has failed to dismantle the terror infrastructure and all banned extremist groups persist with new labels, adding that not only is jihadi media flourishing, but leading figures of extremist Sunni organisations are freely preaching jihad…