This dogma in the West can only be questioned on pain of charges of “Islamophobia” and “bigotry”: the Taliban misunderstands, misinterprets and hijacks Islam, and true Muslims abhor its twisted version of their peaceful religion. Some Islamic apologists in the West even claim that the Taliban and Muslim leaders such as Maulana Abdul Aziz (pictured above) aren’t Muslims at all. Yet these misunderstanders of Islam, these non-Muslims, these impious opportunists who only use religion as a cover, insist on Pakistan fully implementing Islamic law. The learned analysts offer no explanation for this anomaly.
“Taliban negotiators: no peace until Pakistan embraces Islamic law,” from AFP, February 5
Negotiators representing Taliban insurgents said Wednesday there was no chance of peace in Pakistan until the government embraces Islamic shariah law and US-led forces withdraw completely from neighboring Afghanistan.
The tough conditions appear to deal a blow to hopes that talks with the Pakistani government could end the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgency that has rocked the nuclear-armed country since 2007.
Initial peace talks failed to get under way Tuesday when the government delegation refused to meet the militants’ negotiators, citing confusion about the make-up of their team.
The two sides are expected to try to meet again on Thursday or Friday, though no definite arrangements have yet been made.
Washington and Kabul have been deadlocked over a pact known as the Bilateral Security Agreement, which would allow some US troops to stay on in Afghanistan beyond 2014, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai refusing to sign it.
Its supporters say the pact is crucial to Afghanistan’s stability after the bulk of NATO forces pull out.
But Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, the head of the TTP’s three-man talks team, told AFP there could be “no peace” in the region while there were still US troops across the border.
His comments were echoed by his fellow TTP negotiator Maulana Abdul Aziz, who also said the TTP’s long-held commitment to imposing shariah law across Pakistan was not open to debate.
“Without shariah law, the Taliban won’t accept [the talks] even one percent,” he told AFP.
“If some factions accept it, then the others won’t accept it.
There has been skepticism about what the talks could achieve. Local peace deals reached with the militants in the past have quickly fallen apart.
“Their real agenda is shariah,” Aziz said, suggesting that all Pakistan’s secular courts based on the common law system be abolished.
“I don’t think the government will accept this but they should, because war isn’t the way forward.”
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s announcement last week that he wanted to give peace talks another try caught many observers by surprise.
The start of the year has seen a surge in militant violence, with more than 110 people killed, and many had expected the military to launch an offensive against TTP strongholds in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Aziz’s followers at Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque engaged in an armed confrontation with the Pakistan army in 2007 in which more than 100 people died.
The siege is regularly cited by Islamists as one of their main motivations for taking up arms and was also the catalyst for the creation of the umbrella TTP faction in 2007.
Despite the incident and his vocal backing for jihad, Aziz was cleared of all criminal charges against him last September.

Bernard Cliff says
Not exactly democratic, now is it?
mariam rove says
there is nothing democratic when it comes to jihadists. m
Jay Boo says
In the stagnant stench of Muhammad’s hide-away cave where truth is but a cautious whisper like dry leaves tossing in an autumn breeze, a glowing light beckons at the exit calling all to be free.
Islam is the worst of blasphemy.
Sharia is a fatwa to sin.
How Ironic that these fanatical Muslims should issue death threats for blasphemy.
Any Christian who could chose to willfully ignore this vile ideology that
continually insults Jesus with its routine disgusting self-righteous violence is already dead inside.
pongidae rex says
Islam has not changed in 1000 years. What has changed is the total collapse of effective leadership in secular democracies and the sudden access of Islamists to petrodollars. The weaponization of the human rights movement by Islamists has been especially devastating.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Don’t forget the sudden access to jet air travel and the Internet.
mortimer says
The Taliban has declared war on Pakistan. What is Pakistan going to do now?
The Taliban is saying ‘no compromise: 100% our way or no deal’. No deal is possible. The Taliban is demanding to be declared the government of Pakistan. The Taliban will judge if and when the Pak government is ‘Islamic enough’.
This is what I call the ‘More-Islamic-than-thou’ Syndrome. We have the truth and we will kill you if you don’t accept it.
Aslim. Taslam.
dumbledoresarmy says
You got it.
In Islamspeak the definition of “peace” = “everyone Muslim and everyone perfectly sharia-compliant”.
Except that somehow it seems to be downright impossible for *anyone* to be *perfectly* sharia-compliant, all the time. There’s always someone who is, as you put it, “More Islamic Than Thou”.
And so there is no peace in the dar al Islam, and no-one is ever safe, because those who enjoy killing, raping, etc can always find *someone* who is insufficiently Islamic (or in the case of dhimmis, and women, insufficiently grovellingly submissive) and must be *punished*.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Their need for religious and governmental purity goes to the third leg of Islam: military. They are proposing to mix Pak’s intermediate range Shaheen nuclear missile with the joys of Islam according to the Holy Ko-Ran.
Religion + Government + Military = Islam.
Islam + WMD military = uh oh.
gerard says
But for the violence, no one would take these ignorant, stupid and UGLY people seriously.
Champ says
The taliban and sharia can go to hell!!! …which is where they’re gonna wind-up anyway, so the sooner the better.
John Alexander says
Tony Blair was in the news last week promoting the idea that “religious extremism” was now the biggest danger facing the world. He listed a whole load of countries suffering terrorist atrocities without admitting that they were all Muslim.
There’s a great take on his dhimmitude and on the best way to confront Islam in a piece called; “Pied Piper Tony” at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/2014/02/pied-piper-tony.html
Gleaner1 says
Considering these apes represent the inhuman scum that shot the brain out of a young girl of nine because she was holding a pocket calculator, why are these hateful old bigots wearing glasses and using microphones ? How un-islamic.
The sooner those types are shot on sight the better for all, especially women and children.
Champ says
islam is slavery to sin and lust …
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” — Galatians 5:1
Whereas Jesus came to set men *free* from slavery and sin!
dumbledoresarmy says
Recommended reading: the chapters on Pakistan in V S Naipaul’s two books about Islam-on-the-ground, “Among the Believers” and “Beyond Belief”.
He saw the beginnings of the descent into the bottomless void that is the sharia, when he visited in 1979/ 80, just after the Iranian revolution.
He remarks, in a devastating chapter called “The Disorder of the Law”, in “Among the Believers”, that “step by step, out of its Islamic striving, Pakistan had undone the rule of law that it inherited from the British, and had replaced it with nothing.”
That terrible sentence needs to be read aloud, slowly. Pause, at “with”, take a breath, and then say it..”Nothing”. Like “the Nothing” in the film “The Neverending Story”.