Horrific scenes in Karachi
Two bombs were detonated within an hour of each other in Karachi, targetting the Shia.
A motorcycle fitted with explosives rammed into a bus carrying Shias near the Nursery bridge in Karachi, killing 12 people and wounding close to 50. The injured were taken to Jinnah Hospital. About an hour later another explosion outside the ward of the Hospital was detonated.
Shia-hatred is a mainstay of hardline Wahhabi-inspired ideology as promulgated by those darlings of the Islam Channel, Yasir Qadhi and Anwar al-Awlaki. Advocates of this line of takfiri thinking maintain the Shia are heterodox therefore lesser Muslims or, worse, not Muslim at all and even just simply kfar (“unbelievers”). They (wrongly) claim the doctrine of takkiyyah or dissimulation is embedded into Shia liturgy, they regard the practice of mutah to be degenerate and claim their texts are heretical.
It is very depressing to see sectarian hatred of this kind spilling across Pakistan. The Shia-Sunni sectarian hatred is deep-rooted and is old as Islam itself. For once, this violence cannot be blamed on the presence of the US Military or civilian deaths caused by unmanned US Air Force drones in the NWFP. The most depressing thought of all is that no solution for containing sectarian terrorist attacks on civilians is being put forward by the stakeholders. The only certainty is that US Military presence in Pakistan in peace-keeping mode is the only containment option we have.
Unfortunately here in Britain, Shia-hatred and Saudi-inspired ideologies continue to be peddled in mosques and on, particularly those funded by Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states.
2 Comments
The title of this piece needs changing.
This should read: Sunni Islamism’s hatred of Shi’a…
Islamism is also a Shi’a phenomenon; and something that non-Khomeinist Twelvers, Ismai’ili and other Shi’a have been struggling against – usually quite forgotten – for years.
Edited the title and some of the post too, AF.