This is very encouraging news. 100,000 in Karachi and 500,000 Turks. I have long called for peaceful Muslims to stand up to the jihadists. They didn’t do it after 9/11, or 7/7, or multitudinous other atrocities committed in the name of Islam. But that they are doing it now to resist the Islamization of Turkey and Pakistan is all to the good.
“Turkey, Pakistan public oppose bigger Islam role,” by David R. Sands in the Washington Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:
Turkey and Pakistan, two influential Muslim states, have seen massive public demonstrations in recent days in which huge crowds protested that Islam was playing too big a role in public affairs.
In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, an estimated 100,000 people took to the streets Sunday to protest plans by an influential mosque to run a “Taliban-style” anti-vice campaign in the capital city of Islamabad.
A day earlier, some 500,000 Turks staged a rally in Ankara urging Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Islamist and head of the moderate Muslim ruling party, not to run for president, traditionally a secular and nonpartisan post.
The twin rallies come at a time of intense debate over the ability of moderate Muslims across the Islamic world to challenge more radical, anti-Western voices. The Bush administration has made a major push in its public diplomacy to encourage moderate Muslim voices across the greater Middle East.
Pakistan’s Daily Times (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair) has picked up Sands’ story without attribution. And here is an original story from Pakistan’s Dawn (thanks to Sr. Soph).