by Russell H. Smith

Created on: March 27, 2008   Last Updated: January 12, 2009

As radical mullahs roam the deserts and refugee camps of Balochistan- trekking through the mountainous corridors along the lawless Pakistani-Afghan border - spewing venomous vindictive at every turn; pronouncing fatwa and inciting jihad, while imbuing the forces of political Islam across Pakistan. So concerned was its US-ally at the violence and siege at the Red Mosque Seminary in Islamabad last February, that the Bush administration demanded reassurances from the military regime of President Pervez Musharraf, that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal (some 60 warheads) remained uncompromised. Last September, Osama bin Laden's deputy, al-Zawahiri, released videotapes calling for jihad in Pakistan and around the globe. Pakistan remains dangerously fluid: Making common cause with fundamentalist Islam during the 1940s - (the Taliban regime only a recent manifestation) helped spawn the nation, ensuring its long-term radicalization.

But it would be unfair - indeed inaccurate, to use a broad brush-stroke of radicalism across the canvas of the nation. Parliamentary elections held on February 18, were generally viewed as not only a repudiation of the Musharraf dictatorship, but a rejection of terrorism. To be sure, it could be viewed as a battle for the nation's Islamic soul; a recognition that the tenets of democracy, the rule of law, and strong state institutions, remain the panacea to a Failed State.

Despite the blood-stained legacy that accompanied British India's partition in 1947 - and ushered in the creation of Pakistan - nationhood itself was a democratic process, involving national elections, parliamentary resolutions and a referendum. The polity of the day was "split between radical Islamists, moderate Islamists, secular nationalists and the left." (Dreyfuss 75) The leaders of the new Pakistan; many of them lawyers with a strong commitment to parliamentary government, with varying degrees of personal commitment to Islam, inherited the reforming zeal of the nation's pioneering forebears.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898), intellectual, politician and modernist - encouraged his fellow Indian Muslims to education, liberalism and the arts. His founding of a college which became Aligarh Muslim University: an institution which produced many of the free-thinkers, philosophers and lawyers of the nation-in-waiting. Sufi poet and philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) who's inspirational theories on modern Islamic governance in the 1930s spurred; "[T]he movement for the formation

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