“…..economic progress in Pakistan may breed Islamism on an altogether unprecedented scale. One reason Islamism has had relatively little political purchase in Pakistan so far is that there has been so little development. For Islamism is a product and a function of modernity, of development. And unlike Arab countries or Iran, Pakistan has not destroyed its agriculture, it has not exploded its cities, and it has not educated up large cohorts of young men from the country or small towns who leave school into economies that offer them neither jobs nor dignity. The young fighters who cross into Afghanistan to the cry of "Allahu Akbar!" are drawn from just this demographic; but they have been relatively few. If Pakistan seriously develops and modernizes its economy, however, then the old comfortable, tolerant, popular Islam of a strongly rural society may no longer be good enough. If and when the countryside empties out into towns whose infrastructure cannot contain it, the seventh-century utopia of purity and unity set over against corrupt renegade Muslim rulers may have more and more massive appeal.” : THOMAS W. SIMONS JR. U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (1996-98), Visiting Scholar Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Lecturer in Government, Harvard University.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 03:02:39 +0000
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