The fact is that people in Pakistan spend a lot of their efforts blaming their problems on ‘outside powers’ when in fact it is they who have gone wrong somewhere on the journey to enlightenment.

However the continous interference of the West in the internal affairs of the country is only inflaming the matter. The US sincerely seems to think what it is doing is making matter better, when in fact the reverse is true.

About leaving Islam, religion in Pakistan is not the problem. Now I know many who read this will laugh. Of course there are the mad firebrand mullahs. But you must appreciate that at the heart of the Pakistan problem is not the mullahs, poverty or even the lack of liberty. It is educations. The literacy rate in the country is depressingly low and I find that many people here
in Europe really fail to comprehend this into the equation when studying the region.

I repeat this has nothing to do with religion or Islam. Anyways in Pakistan the support for religious parties has been traditionally a low 3%. Only under Musharraf’s dictatorship did they become popular in the country’s border areas with Afghanistan.

Is that kind of where you were going? Not sure I was much help…

I was thinking also of the Afghan movie called ‘Osama’ which was the first movie made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. It takes place during the Taliban-era and you can see what a horrid, wicked, backwards culture the Taliban had created. There is one scene in particular where an older imam is teaching young boys about Koranic prayer…only he takes great relish in the part where he teaches them how to purify themselves with water before prayer times. The older man is clearly lusting over these young boys, referring to one of them as being like a beautiful little nymph. It’s quite gross. But that’s Islam. They make a lot of rules and then justify breaking them.

This is par for the course with the Islamists. Gosh, I really hate to say it because in my heart I would rather that it weren’t true, but I fear that just running the Taliban out of Afghanistan and urging democracy in Pakistan is just a whole hell of a lot easier in theory than in practice. I feel this is not because the Americans lack the effort–clearly, they go above and beyond their duty every day struggling for freedom in these places–but what I fear is that Islamic culture is too unmoveable. We have Pakistan claiming to agree to democracy, but then they have Islamic courts that are practicing Sharia! Same with Afghanistan. The Americans ran the Taliban out, began to progress the Afghans toward democracy and the government was going to put a man to death for converting to Christianity! Can’t have it both ways. The only way for democracy and freedom to advance in these places is for Islam to go. And I don’t know how that can happen. The Muslims themselves have to want it. They simply need to choose another religion so that their lives can be whole.

I applaud your efforts to bring news like this out of places like Pakistan. The world needs to see Islam and its followers for the for the brutal things they are.
Keep up the good work,
sfcmac
The Foxhole
http://www.sfcmac.wordpress.com