It isn’t good news that a nation with nuclear capabilities is slowly becoming a fundamentalist theocracy. Here is a disturbing article in the Guardian about how the growing intolerance of Muslims in Pakistan is having deadly consequences. A few weeks ago, I reported on a group of Christians who were attacked for allegedly defacing the Koran. Their homes were set on fire with them still inside, killing 9 in the process. Investigators believe the real motivation behind the attacks was actually a land grab, and the organizers were in fact working for an unscrupulous local businessman.

These Muslim extremists are also busy trying to fill young people with hate propaganda:

Under Zia [former dictator of Pakistan], school textbooks were purged of any positive reference to minorities or Muslim traditions considered too pagan. Students were taught that Pakistan was a global vanguard of Sunni Islam forever threatened by Hindus, Jews and western imperialists. Pakistan’s penal code was amended to make blasphemy against Islam, including desecration of the Qur’an, a crime under strict penalties including life imprisonment to death. The Hudood Ordinance left millions of victims of rape exposed to the new crime of adultery while the testimony of non-Muslims was judged to be half the value of a Muslim.

Fundamentalists are easy to control and manipulate (since their own mental framework is entirely predictable and simple), and there is no better way to entice people to violence than through religion. It’s no secret that blind faith is a powerful political tool; politicians have known about this fact for centuries (if not more). I shudder to think what’s next for Pakistan. Will it become the next Afghanistan, or the next Turkey?

The author of the article offers a glimmer of hope; religiously motivated attacks are still being condemned, but I see no reason to believe the secularists will win in the long run. When your opposition is prone to acts of violence, how can reason hope to prevail?