The bombing of the mausoleum of a renowned Pashto mystic poet outside the Pakistani city of Peshawar has darkened the mood further in a nation already numbed by the attack on cricket, its favourite sport, when the Sri Lankan team were targeted in Lahore.
Taliban militants are suspected of being behind the attack on the shrine of Abdul Rehman at the foot of the Khyber pass, where for centuries musicians and poets have gathered in honour of the 17th century messenger of peace and love.
Wahhabi fundamentalism has advanced so quickly in Pakistan that madrasas have taught an entire generation to abhor the region’s gentle, syncretic Sufi Islam and to embrace instead an imported form of Saudi Wahhabism.
“The trend towards anti-culture extremism, however, is seen across the Islamic world, much aided in the 1990s by Saudi investment in the spread of the Wahhabi faith,” writes Pakistan’s The Daily Times. With the latest attack, miltants had put the Pakistan state on notice about their intent against Pakistani culture, the paper said. It worried that the Taliban were also likely to attack the Sindhis whose mysticism-based culture is still intact in the interior of the province.
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