I saw this article on the murder of Shi’ah in Karachi a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t want to do another article on Muslim-on-Muslim violence; they weren’t anything new. Last night, I had a conversation with a friend and something occurred to me: Pakistan is a Muslim country, at least 99% of the population is Muslim. There are some Christians, and the Ahmadis (different post) were declared non-Muslim, otherwise the assumption is that everyone in Pakistan is a Muslim. The Ahmadiyya situation indicates that the Sunni majority could work to legally have the Shi’ah declared non-Muslim, like in Saudi Arabia. What sense does the violence make? Then it dawned on me, that the people who are killing other Muslims are insecure in their own Islam, and the easiest way to become secure in that identity is to destroy all differences. The question is do the perpetrators of these acts see others as being more secure/comfortable in their Islam? What is the difference that is so challenging? Or is difference enough to instigate this level of violence? This rhetoric is that of Wahabbism, the Taliban and Osama. There is only one version of Islam, and it is each of their’s and they need to destroy all other understandings of Islam, including each other’s.
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