Overview

The book is an account of how the Shia-Sunni conflict was relocated from the Middle East to Pakistan after the rise of Revolutionary Iran in 1979, through the mediating agency of the rulers in Pakistan and the proliferation of the religious seminaries funded by Saudi Arabia. It examines the death of General Zia in the context of the sectarian conflict, goes into the process of production of apostatising fatwas in Pakistan followed by violent action by organizations formed from the non-state actors used by the state for its covert wars. It also delves into the state of the Shia communities in the Middle East and their historical connections with South Asia. It examines the rise of Shia culture in Lucknow and its formative influence on the rise of the Shia in Iraq, with a parallel scrutiny of the rise of Wahhabism and its infiltration of India in the eighteenth century. It records the origins and history of organisations doing sectarian terrorism in Pakistan and their linkages to Al Qaeda whose trajectory into a sectarian identity is also traced to the rise of Al Zarqawi as a parallel leader in Iraq. The book facilitates an understanding of the phenomenon of terrorism in Pakistan today.

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9780195476620

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Khaled Ahmed, Consulting Editor Daily Times and The Friday Times, with a 30-year career in journalism, has written on the ideology and politics of Pakistan. His books include Pakistan: Behind the Ideological Mask (Vanguard Books: Lahore, 2000) and Pakistan: The State in Crisis (Vanguard Books: Lahore, 2001). From 1991 to 1993 he was one of the founder members of Indo-Pak Neemrana Dialogue, track-two diplomacy. In 1995 was a participant at a New Delhi discussion on Indo-Pak relations organised by Time magazine. In 1995 was member of the Pakistan delegation to Moscow and read a paper there on Pak-Russian bilateral trade. In 1996 he was a SAARC observer of the Bangladesh national elections and wrote the SAARC report on the status of the minorities in Bangladesh.

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