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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lazarre who wrote (227162)	4/16/2007 2:16:48 AM
From: kumar	Respond to of 281500

Karachi protest at Sharia mosque The rally was organised by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement Karachi protest Tens of thousands of people have protested in the Pakistani city of Karachi against a radical mosque and its religious schools in Islamabad. The chief cleric of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), Abdul Aziz, had announced a Taleban-style Islamic court would be set up to curb "vulgar" activities. He also gave the government a month to close video shops and brothels. The protest organisers, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), branded the mosque "religious terrorists". Fatwa The MQM is largely supportive of the policies of the President Pervez Musharraf. MQM leader Altaf Hussain told the rally by telephone from London via loudspeakers: "Islam is a religion of peace and there is no place in it for using force or terrorism. "The people of Islamabad are insecure and under threat due to the activities of these religious terrorists." Abdul Aziz is a vocal critic of the Pakistan government's support for the US-led war on terrorism. Last week he announced a court based on Islamic Sharia law and began an anti-vice campaign. The court passed a fatwa on Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar after she was pictured hugging a man following a paragliding flight. Mr Aziz has also threatened to "take action" if the government moved against his mosque. Analysts say Mr Musharraf has been criticised for not taking a harder line but may be reluctant in an election year. Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk Published: 2007/04/16 00:37:24 GMT © BBC MMVII

To: lazarre who wrote (227162)	4/16/2007 7:00:49 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 281500

It's always been a battle of ideas. By militarizing it with the "Global War on Terror", we just win it for the Islamics. As more and more people are realizing. There is no military solution.

To: lazarre who wrote (227162)	4/16/2007 10:09:51 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

It's a good idea, provided our leaders are intelligent enough to find the right people to help. If you remember it was partly our cold war "help" to the freedom fighters of Afghanistan that partly caused the whole mess we're in now with Al Qaeda. My confidence in our leaders' intelligence to do this sort of subtle manipulation of other societies is almost nil. So, while it's a smashing idea, I doubt we have anyone with enough brains to carry it off. The litany of our failures in this area is long- we almost invariably choose the corrupt and the losers, or if we choose winners, we choose ones which later bite us in the ass.

To: lazarre who wrote (227162)	4/16/2007 10:22:51 AM
From: michael97123	Respond to of 281500

I think we can engage iran and the shiaa islamists but i dont think you can make a deal with wababis, al quaeda and co that wouldnt be appeasement of some sort. If we go back to the cold war, one of the key reasons for our ultimate success was that we encouraged the sino soviet split. We need to support moderate sunnis and try to engage iran thus isolating al quaeda and the wababis. This is no easy task. But hell mao morphed into capitalist china, so maybe anything is possible. But one thing you cant do is to appease al quaeda as the anti-israel folks on the thread want to do by abandoning israel. That would be taken as a sign of weakness of the first magnitude and israel has very little to do with the overall wahabi/al quaeda agenda which is more about ascendant islam and destruction of the west. In iran otoh there is a desire to play on some level.

To: lazarre who wrote (227162)	4/16/2007 12:43:16 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

1. Get the West's armies, particularly the US and the UK's the hell outta the ME. 2. Reduce dependence asap on fossil fuels which would also help in #1. 3. Stop putting radical anybodies on a pedestal. There is such as thing as ignoring behavior in order to extinguish it. 4. Stop supporting tyrants and dictators --- a la #1 above. 5. Treat terrorism as: a. a military response to #1 above and b. a criminal act of murder. 6. Stop turning the US and the UK into police states based on paranoia and fear because too much attention is being paid to radical anybodies. 7. Ignore fundamentalist, rightwing freaks of all stripes. 8. Clean our economic, political, military house and expect others to follow suit in their own time -- or -- let them go along their merry way. In the meantime Russia, with nukes, has slipped back into being a dictatorship and Afghanistan is a full-fledged narco state. Fat lot of good the 'professionals' are doing.